"Mossy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the soft winds, the blue sky, the rivulet, the mossy rocks, the cleft-born wild-flower, the squirrels, and the insects,—all focus our attention on the "deep content" to be found in "the haunts of Nature," and suggest Wordsworth's philosophy of the conscious enjoyment ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... brook With his hair outshook O'er the weir so cool and mossy, And mock the crow As he peers below With a caw that's vain ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... drooping into the water, she took out of her pocket that little brown French classic, Pharamond, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge or ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... that Peter was going to die—to DIE. Old people died. Grown-up people died. Even children of whom we had heard died. But that one of US—of our merry little band— should die was unbelievable. We could not believe it. And yet the possibility struck us in the face like a blow. We sat on the mossy stones under the dark old evergreens and gave ourselves up to wretchedness. We all, even Dan, cried, except ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... down and focus, so that I could see the fruit that was ripe, and the fruit that was green, and the beauty of the flowers. I used to watch the birds building through that glass, and could almost see the eggs in one little mossy cup of a chaffinch's nest; but I could not quite. I did see the tips of the young birds' beaks, though, when they were hatched and the old ones ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... one of these projecting slabs a nest consisting of a large mass of green moss and liver-worts had been wedged. From the earth above the slab grew some ferns, which partially overhung the nest. Across the nest, a few inches in front of it, ran a moss-covered root. From out of the mossy walls of the nest there emerged a growing plant. All these things served to divert attention from the nest, bulky though this was, its outer walls being over 2 inches thick. The inner wall was thin—a mere lining to the earth. The nest contained ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... farther away from the Oakwood side. They crossed the brow of the hill and descended to the valley on the other side. There they found a merry little stream which tumbled along with frequent cataracts over mossy rocks, and followed its course, often stopping to dip their hands in the bright water and let the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... Hagley Park thou strayst. Thy British Tempe! There along the dale, With woods o'erhung, and shagg'd with mossy rocks, Whence on each hand the gushing waters play, And down the rough cascade white dashing fall, Or gleam in lengthen'd vista through the trees, You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade Of solemn oaks, that tuft ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... bank arm-in-arm, and strolled into the shade of the pines, which grew deeper and deeper, till only here and there a stray sunbeam lighted up the green mossy carpet. So cool was the air that Mozart soon had to put on the coat, which, but for his prudent wife, he would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... exactly where it was. So, after some difficulty with our coachman, and being stopped at one church which would not answer our purpose in any respect, we were at last set down by one which looked authentic; embowered in mossy elms, with a most ancient and goblin yew-tree, an ivy-mantled tower, all perfect as could be. Here, leaning on the old fence, we repeated the Elegy, which certainly applies here as ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... native boots, or kummings, as they are called, for I knew it would be impossible to get along with anything else; but the sharp edges and points of the stones could be felt through them almost as if one were barefooted. Do not think that the mossy meadows were a relief after the rocks. On the contrary, they were but a delusion and a snare, for beneath the velvet cushion was concealed the sharp and jagged rock that cut the foot all the same, and proved a more deadly, because a hidden ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... was the great wheel. The dam was full and overflowing, but the wheel was still; and when I looked in, the water trickled and plashed down into the gloomy chamber with its mossy, slimy stone sides, while the light shone in at the opening, and seemed to make bright bands across the darkness before it played ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... number of very pleasant cottages, each marked with the Mainstay crest. All this was grouped about a green with real geese drilling thereon. Mr. Britling conducted his visitor (through a lych gate) into the church-yard, and there they found mossy, tumble-down tombstones, one with a skull and cross-bones upon it, that went back to the later seventeenth century. In the aisle of the church were three huge hatchments, and there was a side chapel devoted to the Mainstay family and the Barons ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... pursuit, entering incautiously among these mossy swamps and pits, overwhelmed by the sight of the horrors within them, flee away, whining, with looks of terror; and long after, though petted by their master's hand, they still tremble at his feet, possessed by fright. These ancient hidden places of the forests, unknown to men, are called ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Poesy charm'd mine infant ear. Soon stored with much of legendary lore, The sports of childhood charm'd my soul no more; Far from the scene of gaiety and noise, Far, far from turbulent and empty joys, I hied me to the thick o'erarching shade, And there, on mossy carpet, listless laid; While at my feet the rippling runnel ran, The days of wild romance antique I'd scan; Soar on the wings of fancy through the air, To realms of light, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... green and mossy bank There flows a clear and fairy stream; There the pert squirrel oft has drank, And thought, ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... everlasting wrangling among themselves is more than I can endure. When people begin to quarrel, even to disagree warmly, the blood rushes to my brain, and I long for a cool breeze from some piny height, a mossy seat by some calm lake, that mirrors only the blue of heaven, the measured flow of falling waters, the rustle of leaves, the hum of bees, or the song ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the shattered pyramids, by the path through the blooming wood, you come to a little mossy lawn surrounded by the wild shrubs; it is overgrown with anemones, wall flowers and violets, whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers whose name I know not, and which scatter through the air the divinest odor; which, as you recline under the shade of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the village, whose huts loomed solemnly between the woods and the dunes in the softening twilight. The van den Endes were lodged with the captain of a fishing-smack in a long, narrow wooden house with sloping mossy tiles and small-paned windows. The old man threw open the door of the little shell-decorated parlor and peered in. "Klaartje!" his voice rang out. A parrot from the Brazils screamed, but Spinoza only heard the soft "Yes, father," that came sweetly ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... weather, especially on that naked desolate coast, exposed to the fury of the winds, one marvels at our modern craze for the sea; not merely to come and gaze upon and listen to it, to renew our youth in its salt, exhilarating waters and to lie in delicious idleness on the warm shingle or mossy cliff; but to be always, for days and weeks and even for months, at all hours, in all weathers, close to it, with its murmur, "as of one in pain," for ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... blue, but cloudless. The entire Forest stood silent, at attention. It knew perfectly well that she had come. It knew the moment when she entered; watched and followed her; and behind her something dropped without a sound and shut her in. Her feet upon the glades of mossy grass fell silently, as the oaks and beeches shifted past in rows and took up their positions at her back. It was not pleasant, this way they grew so dense behind her the instant she had passed. She realized that they gathered in an ever-growing ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... living can conceive how mossy and dried-up and gnarled and black and unlike a human being such an old plain-dweller could be. The skin was so drawn over brow and cheeks, that he looked almost like a death's-head, and one saw only by a faint gleam in the hollows of the eye sockets that ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... stucco house, somewhat decayed looking, and evidently built on the ruins of an older building. We came upon it at a broad Italian-looking loggia, supported by stone pillars bowered in with vines—very cool and pleasant—with mossy slabs for its floor, here and there tropical ferns set out in tubs, some wicker chairs standing about, and a table at one side on which two little barelegged negro girls were busy setting out yellow fruit, and other appurtenances of luncheon, on ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... on the morning of the 21st we left our encampment and soon after arrived at the Mossy Portage where the cargoes were carried through a deep bog for a quarter of a mile. The river swells out above this portage to the breadth of several miles and as the islands are numerous there are a great variety of channels. Night overtook us before we arrived ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... quest had brought me into a strange old haunted forest, and that I had thrown myself down to rest at the gnarled mossy root of a great oak-tree, while all about me was nought but fantastic shapes and capricious groups of gold-green bole and bough, wondrous alleys ending in mysterious coverts, and green lanes of exquisite turf that seemed to have been laid down in expectation of some milk-white ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... has sunk into some mossy or miry place," said Michael, to a man near him, into whose face he could not look, "a cruel, cruel death to one like her! The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the liberty of the individual and of the fact that "hurting couldn't make her good," she executed a solitary little dance on the green, mossy sward beneath the trees. It was rather a painful process, since certain portions of her anatomy still tingled from the retributive strokes of justice, but she set her teeth and accomplished the dance with a consciousness of unholy glee that ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... tree in Sherwood's depths that same day. A score and more of barefoot friars were there, and some that looked like tinkers, and some that seemed to be sturdy beggars and rustic hinds; and seated upon a mossy couch was one all clad in tattered scarlet, with a patch over one eye; and in his hand he held the golden arrow that was the prize of the great shooting match. Then, amidst a noise of talking and laughter, ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Ben?" he whispered behind his hand, pointing to the portrait of a red-haired Diana sitting on a low, mossy stump in a lonely spot. Her back was turned toward us, and she seemed to be taking a sun bath. He looked stealthily around to make sure his curiosity was not noted by ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... too awful to be shut up in one little room all day long, so the next morning she went out again into the forest, and wandered through the beautiful dells and glades. After going some distance she saw a young hunter lying down on the mossy bank asleep, and, approaching him cautiously, she found that she was now so very close to him that it would be impossible to get away before he awoke. Then again, he was so handsome, that, instead of running away, she rubbed her little nose against the young hunter. What was her surprise to ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... kind of sickness and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor Terrace,—nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual summer—or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... mossy trunk of an old pine, looking up admiringly on the wonderful heights around me—crystal peaks sparkling over dark pine trees—shadowy, airy distances of mountain heights, rising crystalline amid many-colored masses of cloud; while, looking out over my ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... then to wander here! But now—beshrew yon nimble deer— Like that same hermit's, thin and spare, The copse must give my evening fare; Some mossy bank my couch must be, 305 Some rustling oak my canopy. Yet pass we that; the war and chase Give little choice of resting-place— A summer night, in greenwood spent, Were but tomorrow's merriment: 310 But hosts may in these wilds abound, Such ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... measured and fenced fields, checkered, a month since, with bluish lines of Swedes, with the ragged purple of mangels, and the feathery emerald-green of carrots. There are umber-colored patches of fresh-turned furrows; here and there the mossy, luxurious verdure of new-springing rye; gray stubble; the ragged brown of discolored, frost-bitten rag-weed; next, a line of tree-tops, thickening as they drop to the near bed of a river, and beyond the river-basin showing again, with tufts of hemlock among naked oaks and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... clear, crystal pools, a long winding chain, doubling back on itself in loops and curves—form the source of the permanent flow of the Roper; pools only a few feet deep, irregular and wide-spreading, with mossy-green, deeply undermined, overhanging banks, and lime-stone bottoms washed into terraces that gleam azure-blue through the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... what I plucked this morn, Kind nature's gift, ere you and I were born. Through mossy woods, and watered vales, I roam, While day is young, and bring my treasure home; Each lovely bell so tenderly I bear, It knoweth not my fingers from the air, Lo now, they scarce acknowledge their surprise, And how the dewdrops sparkle in ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... wondering how so magnificently mossy a person came to be traveling third-class in his ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... these Crusoes had to be very careful to do was never to let the fire go out. It was easily kept in by placing a kind of mossy peat among the hot ashes and covering it ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... and marking the eager, insistent look in Hite's eyes. Both horses were at a standstill now. A jay-bird clanged out its wild woodsy cry from the dense shadows of a fern-brake far in the woods on the right, and they heard the muffled trickling of water, falling on mossy stones hard by, from a spring so slight as to be only a silver thread. The trees far below waved in the wind, and a faint dryadic sibilant singing sounded a measure or so, and grew fainter in the lulling of the breeze, and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... through which the Thames (not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills (which pour into it their tributary rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain of Bandusium, or the wells of Scamander, by which the wives and daughters of the Trojans washed their splendid ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... mile and a half of walking we came to an oak wood. The road dipped suddenly between cool, green, mossy banks and lay in deep, grateful shade from the arching oaks above. I climbed the bank on one side and looked into the wood. It was very thick and wild, apparently rarely penetrated. Through the close-growing stems of the undergrowth ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... were by this time both tired and sleepy, and finding near by a soft mossy bank, they lay down and were quickly asleep, whilst the dog curled himself up contentedly at their ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her own had she none—and often both her parents—who lived in a hut by itself up among the mossy stumps of the old decayed forest—had to leave her alone—sometimes even all the day long, from morning till night. But she no more wearied in her solitariness than does the wren in the wood. All the flowers were her friends—all the birds. The linnet ceased not his song for her, though her footsteps ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... forest there was a crash—that was a cannon ball that had wandered from the battlefield and was seeking a path in the wood, tearing up stumps and cutting through boughs. The hoary, bearded bison trembled in his mossy lair and bristled up his long shaggy mane; he half rose, resting on his forelegs, and, shaking his beard, he gazed in amazement at the sparks suddenly glittering amid the brushwood: this was a stray bombshell that twirled and whirled and hissed, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... horse, nothing loath, obeyed his young master's behest as promptly as though he had fully understood the words. Meanwhile, Ralph found a mossy spot on the shady side of a big gray, lichen-covered boulder, and, seating himself thereon, with his back comfortably adjusted to a depression in the rock, he drew a worn account book from a pocket of his corduroy coat. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... have the first wreath made, then, and not until then, will I tell you what they say of the youth and maiden who weave autumn leaves for each other, and together. Come and sit on this mossy ledge. I will spread my overcoat upon it. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... hundred and sixty bushels per acre are reported to have been raised in the county, in 1849. The yield increases from year to year. A general and rapid improvement of the State is in progress, and in nothing is this seen more clearly than in the corn crop. Mossy "old sedge" fields, which have been laid out for years, are broken up, and will yield, if it be a good season, from five to ten bushels per acre; fence them, lime them with twenty to thirty bushels, and seed the oat crop with clover, and in two years ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in the style of Louis XIII, with great slate roofs and high dormer windows. After these came a lower and more modern building, ending with the chapel. In front of the chateau was an old square bastion forming a terrace, whose mossy walls were bathed by the waters of a large stagnant marsh. The west front which was plainer, was separated by only a few feet of level ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the shady walks, crushing the long, rank weeds, and the occasional wild flowers beneath her feet, and at last sank down at the foot of a willow, whose long, drooping branches trailed nearly to the mossy sward beneath. She buried her head in her hands, and her thoughts went back over the past. The retrospection ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Clonbrony. He had not seen it since he was six years old. Some faint reminiscence from his childhood made him feel or fancy that he knew the place. It was a fine castle, spacious park; but all about it, from the broken piers at the great entrance, to the mossy gravel and loose steps at the hall-door, had an air of desertion and melancholy. Walks overgrown, shrubberies wild, plantations run up into bare poles; fine trees cut down, and lying on the ground in lots to be sold. A hill that had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... bays swung to the brow of the hill with ease, and dashed into a small circular clearing, where a quaint little two-story building, with a mossy watering-trough out in front, nestled under the shade of majestic old trees that reared their brown and scarlet crowns proudly into the sky. A long, low porch ran across the front of the structure, and a complaining sign hung out announcing, in dim, weather-flecked ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... too, the English countryside owes for its beauty to the many old manor-houses, gabled and moated, with their quaint, mossy-walled gardens and great forestlike parks. Whatever we may think of the English territorial system as economics, its service to English scenery has been incalculable. Without English traditionalism we should hardly ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake at Grasmere and threw ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... perceived a pretty fountain which partly veiled a natural grotto. A path led to it, and this path had for Gilbert an irresistible attraction. He seated himself upon the margin of the fountain, resting his feet upon a mossy stone. This ought to be his last halt, for night was approaching. Under the influence of the bubbling waters, Gilbert resumed his dreamy soliloquy, but his meditations were presently interrupted by the sound of a horse's feet ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... never dwelt in a queerer or stancher body; see her huddled up, and you would think her a bundle of hair, or a bit of old mossy wood, or a slice of heathery turf, with some red soil underneath but speak to her, or give her a cat to deal with, be it bigger than herself, and what an incarnation of affection, energy, and fury—what a fell ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... espied a large barrel overflowing with clear, sparkling water. Stopping, he opened his bag and drew forth a small tin cup. This he filled with water, and then withdrew a short distance among the trees and sat down upon the mossy ground. Mrs. Garton had thoughtfully provided him with a generous lunch, and this he now opened and spread out before him. He was hungry, so the sandwiches and cold meat seemed the best he had ever tasted. There ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... very waters, the recollection of which gave the poet such exquisite pleasure in after years. One would fain have the surroundings unchanged—the cot where Woodworth dwelt, the ponderous well-sweep, creaking with age, at which his youthful hands were wont to tug strongly; and finally the mossy bucket, overflowing with crystal nectar fresh from the cool depths below. Yet in spite of the changes, one gets fairly well the illusion of the ancient spot, and comes away well content to have quaffed a draught of such excellent water ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... Street,—many of them long since abandoned for modern changelings far less effective. For the first time Helen realized the origin of the name of "Bouwerie," and how far into New York's and the nation's traditions reached some of the mossy ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... its surroundings of massive masonry and majestic decay. She all life, a creature of the present, and yet still more of the future, as bright with the sunshine of a hope that could never die; and they, those mouldering stones, that broken tracery, those mossy arches, sad in the desolation of the present, sadder still in the memories of an unenlightened past. Frank finished his sketch, and, holding it behind him, stole gently up to the side of ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... we went, with the "ould dhragoon" skipping and bounding on before us, over fallen trees and mossy rocks; now ducking under the low, tangled branches of the white cedar, then carefully piloting us along rotten logs, covered with green moss, to save us from the discomfort of wet feet. All this time he still kept ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... bank of the lake to a point where she was screened both by thick, green shrubbery and the top of a single immense tree from the sky, sat down on some dry, mossy growth, took the law library from her belt, opened it and placed it in her lap. Vague stirrings indicated that her escort was also settling down in an irregular circle about her; and apprehension shivered on Telzey's skin again. It wasn't that their attitude was hostile; they were ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... car. The woods, green with June or crimson with November, clamber over each other's shoulders up the ascent; but as we attain the elevation of two hundred feet above the Savage, their tufted tops form a soft and mossy embroidery beneath us, diminishing in perspective far down the cleft of the ravine. As we turn the flank of the great and stolid Backbone Mountain we command the mouth of another stream, pouring in from the south-west: it is a steeply-enclosed, hill-cleaving torrent, which some lover ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... a little brook running in and out among the trees, and it sounded like music when it went over the stones. Well, they sat down on the grass, near a mossy old stump, and ate their lunch, until there wasn't even so much as a crumb of a jam tart left. They had just gotten through when, all of a sudden, they heard a big noise. It was like some one stamping his feet down and ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... reconnoitring, hither, thither, on the southern side or Lacy quarter: to the top of the Keulenberg (BLUDGEON HILL), at last,—which is ten or a dozen miles from Krakau and Quosdorf, but commands an extensive view. Towns, village-belfries, courses of streams; a country of mossy woods and wild agricultures, of bogs, of shaggy moor. Southward 10 miles is Radeberg [not RadebUrg, observe]; yonder is the town of Pulsnitz on our stream of Pulsnitz; to southeast, and twice as far, is Bischofswerda, chasmy Stolpen (too well known to us before this): behind us, Konigsbruck, Kamenz ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the coombe's steep side with feet that slipped and slid on the wet, shelving banks of mossy grass. But at length she reached the level of the water and here her progress became more sure. Further on, she knew, must be the footbridge which Barry had described—probably beyond the sharp curve which ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Roger Brandt; but felt no great concern; he had no curiosity to know more of her. He admired Helen because she was beautiful, yet the feeling was much the same he might have experienced for a graceful deer, a full-foliaged tree, or a dark mossy-stoned bend in a murmuring brook. The girl's face and figure, perfect and alluring as they were, had not awakened him from ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... read on the mossy stones the unchanging little histories, so brief but so eloquent, some of them. The stone that interests her most and that each time seems like a freshly new adventure is the simple shaft that bears no name, no date, just the tenderly ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... companions' powers. The slanting edge looked dangerous, but was not, although one must be steady and there was an awkward corner. At the turning, the ledge got narrow, and one must seize a knob and then step lightly on a stone embedded in mossy soil. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... road has been formed by blasting at very many places. A wooded slope descends suddenly from the edge of the road, while, on the other hand, a bank rises abruptly to the top of the ridge, alternately mossy, rocky, and clayey, and presenting a good geological section, all the way along, of the nucleus of Dorjiling spur, exposing broken masses of gneiss. As I descended, I came upon the upper limit of the chesnut, a tree second in abundance to the oak; gigantic, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... gratified! It was April, and at the end of July, when work was growing slack, they would be married. They were going North for the honeymoon. A wealthy and grateful patient of Saxham's had placed at his disposal a grey, historic Scotch turret-mansion, standing upon mossy lawns, with woods of larch and birch and ancient Spanish chestnuts all about it, looking over the silver Tweed. In the heat and hurry of his daily round of work, Saxham, who had spent an autumn holiday at this place, would find himself ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... September, but the summer heat had returned, and when the road passed through a beech wood the shade was welcome. Here over the mossy ground rambled the enchanter's nightshade, still carrying its frail white flowers, which really have a weird appearance in the twilight of the woods. The plant has not been called circe without a reason. Under the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... her own torch, she sprang to her feet and ran lightly down to where the snow brook whirled in mossy ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the rolling volumes of smoke like fire-fiends armed with destruction; but the vast reservoir of flame still glowed on, apparently undiminished. The curtain of night seemed to be suddenly undrawn. Objects the most minute were visible as in the broad view of day. The brown heath, the grey and the mossy stone, were each distinguishable, but clad alike in one bright and unvarying colour, red as the roaring furnace. Soon the great magazine of inflammable matter in the interior caught fire, and rolled out in a wide mass of light, like the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... into the hills. The vision of human pain and ruin was lost in beauty. We were among the firs, and the air was full of balm. The mossy banks gave out a scent of rain, and little water-falls from the heights set the branches trembling over secret pools. At each turn of the road, forest, and always more forest, climbing with us as we climbed, and dropped away from us to narrow ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge, near the top of a mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping was it with the mossy character of the rock, and I have had a growing affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and claim it as its own. I said, what a lesson in architecture is here! Here is a house that was built, but with such loving care and such beautiful adaptation of the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... moor, woke him to a realization of the fact that the school was long since out, and probably another thrashing awaited him when he got home. Sadly and regretfully he dragged his little aching body from its soft mossy bed, felt that his limbs were still sore, and that he was very, very hungry. Rebellion again surging within him as he remembered all, he trudged home, fearful yet proud, resolved to ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... little valley, and a ruinous stone dam still held the water in a deep, quiet pond between two round hills. Above it a brook ran down through the woods, and below, with a pleasant musical sound, the water dripped over the mossy stone lips of the dam and fell into the rocky pool below. Nature had long ago healed the wounds of men; she had half-covered the ruined mill with verdure, had softened the stone walls of the dam with mosses and lichens, and had crept down the ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... draw so good a one. In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... of course, to a complicated series of wild dashes, doublings, and upleaping arches in the swift torrent. Just before it reaches the head of the fall the current is divided, the left division making a vertical drop of about eighty feet in a romantic, leafy, flowery, mossy nook, while the other ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... of Solyma! begin the song: To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, The dreams of Pindus and th' Aonian maids, Delight no more—O thou my voice inspire Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire! Rapt into future times, the bard begun: A Virgin shall ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Tom, on a little mossy seat in the court, every one of his button-holes stuck full of cape jessamines, and Eva, gayly laughing, was hanging a wreath of roses round his neck; and then she sat down on his knee, like a chip-sparrow, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... white, and numerous, produced on slender stalks in summer; they are of the general type of the flowers of the mossy section, and need not be further described. The foliage forms rigid cushions, dense, rounded, and of a dark green colour in the early season; later it becomes grey, with an exudation; the leaves are arranged in rosette form, having ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... the young man strode on down the rugged slope, or leaped from mossy stone to stone, amongst heather, furze, and fern, to where the steep sides of the combe grew more thickly clothed with trees, in and amongst which the sheep had made tracks like a map of the little valley, till all at once he stood at the edge of a huge mass of rock, gazing through the ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... few curious saprophytic representatives on the lower slopes. Mertin's coral-root is one of the most common. This generally grows in clusters in the mossy woods, along the trail or government road above Longmire Springs. It is very common all around the mountain at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,500 feet. With it, grow two tway-blades and the rattlesnake plantain. In bogs, two ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... who had been up very early, grew tired, and as the sun was hot she went to lie down on a mossy bank in the shade of the arbour. She held the pretty bird near her breast, and was just falling asleep, when the fairy contrived to restore the prince to his own shape, so that as Graziella opened her eyes she found herself in the arms of a lover ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... make my supplication to you, to whom I would be that, and more. All this week have I vainly sought for speech with you alone. But now these blessed trees hem us round; there is none to spy or listen—and here is a mossy bank, fit throne for a faery queen. Will you ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... idea of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy bark and scanty foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is not worthy of immortality. Nothing else, indeed, is worthy of it; and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... liberal dimensions, which is walled around with masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the estate slant away toward the valley.... Roses overflow the retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in the theaters. The house is a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence upon the human soul—when clear sunlight illuminates everything, yet sheds ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Clustered around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... brooding silence lay over the sleeping earth as Daisy, with a sinking heart, drew near the house. Her soft footfalls on the green mossy ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... like wool." Very beautiful is this snow as it softens the rugged, corky limbs of the mossy cup oaks. It is not like the hard, granular snow which stung your face like sand when you were out in the storm a month ago, when the trumpets of the sky were doing a fanfare, the wind raged from the northwest, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... full voic'd Quire below, In Service high, and Anthems cleer, As may with sweetnes, through mine ear, Dissolve me into extasies, And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes. And may at last my weary age Find out the peacefull hermitage, The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew, And every Herb that sips the dew; Till old experience do attain To somthing like Prophetic strain. These pleasures Melancholy give, And I with thee will ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... right. There are fifty people in this old rue Royale who can tell you their wild versions of this house's strange true story against any one who can do this present writer the honor to point out the former residence of 'Sieur George, Madame Delicieuse, or Doctor Mossy, or the unrecognizably restored dwelling ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... step at once. He knelt down on a mossy bank, and there, with the glorious prospect of the beautiful wilderness before him, and the setting sun irradiating his still haggard countenance, held ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... winding wall of mossy stone, Frost-flung and broken, lines A lonesome acre thinly grown With grass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Hudson Straits, dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms of death itself, but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the floundering {385} walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain streams running from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the northern sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile shores the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and plenty ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... amber with soft mossy cushions. On each side of the cave-opening was a great forest of coral. Back of the cave ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... By a mossy bank a little girl—a miniature Audrey—stout, rosy, and ragged, stood with a yellow straw hat aslant on her yellow hair, eating the leaves from a spray of beech in her hand. Audrey looked at us, eating the beech leaves steadily, but would not answer, not even 'Where's your father to?' ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... world the chief charm of the Old Colony region. Along the old Pilgrim trails you may step from modern culture and its acme of civilization through the pasture lands of the Pilgrims into glimpses of the forest primeval. The Pilgrims' boulders, their kettle-hole ponds, mossy swamps and ferny hillsides, here and there their very forest trees, await you still. For Indian and panther you need not look; wolf or bear you will hardly see; the wild turkeys are gone; otherwise the wild life ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... coming long before he was near, took refuge in a thicket and waited until the lion approached; then with his arrow he shot him in the side. But the shot did not pierce his flesh; instead it flew back as if it had struck stone, and fell on the mossy earth. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... out his hand to her. She took it without a word. They went back to the village, the towers of which they could see shaped like the pope's nose in the heart of the valley: one of the towers had an empty storks' nest on the top of its roof of mossy tiles, looking just like a toque on a woman's head. At a cross-roads just outside the village they passed a fountain above which stood a little Catholic saint, a wooden Magdalene, graciously and a little mincingly holding out her arms. With an instinctive movement Anna responded to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of the tree whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass, cross-legged at his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the ladies ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... soft thuds of hoofs die away along the forest path, himself dizzy in the saddle from the pounding of his blood. When the last hoof-beat had ceased, he half-slipped, half-sank from his saddle to the ground, and sat on a mossy boulder. He was hard hit—harder than he had deemed possible until that one great moment when he had held her in his arms. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... speed was golden. But every step met its obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers, brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath, footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... to her like everything else about her, and for her own feeling she was some strange thing that was being laboriously driven forward through the sunshine. Then suddenly, in a small forest clearing, she sank down on a mossy knoll in the glaring sun. It was delicious to stretch out her legs, to lay her back against the warm huckleberry bushes. There could be nothing nicer in life. Around the clearing stood young firs and pines, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... I love the mossy quietness That grows upon the great stone flags, The dark tree-ferns, the staghorn ferns, The prehistoric, antlered stags That carven stand and stare ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... river the gorge becomes narrow and more thickly wooded; the path winding along it is hot and close and still; the water is clear brown in its depths, and green in the shallows and where it slides over a mossy stone; it bubbles into foam in its tiny waterfalls and cataracts and miniature whirlpools; it is deliciously sweet and cool. The green moss grows to the very edge of its white stones, and ferns and hart's-tongues and ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... of voices and the musical laugh of girls. The ear tries to distinguish the words and gather the meaning; but the syllables are intertangled—it is like listening to a low sweet song in a language all unknown. This is the water falling gently over the mossy hatch and splashing faintly on the stones beneath; the blue dragon-flies dart over the smooth surface or alight on a broad leaf—these blue dragon-flies when thus resting curl the ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... stood and gazed at them without fear; the playful hares in the green alleys ceased not their nightly sports at the harmless footsteps; and when at last, in the dense thicket, they sunk down on the mossy roots of a giant oak, the nightingales overhead chanted as if in melancholy welcome. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arrows would, of course, have pierced our centres of palpitation at the first mutual glance. Still, though quivering with emotion, neither would be disposed to lessen the distance. Methought we would even seat ourselves on the mossy banks—the dozen yards still intervening—and, each leaning back against a tree, would 'face the enemy'—the eternal joy-sharer, sorrow-sharer, worship, wisdom, love, pity, wonder, use, sport, hope-sharer; while, occasionally, a premonitory, prophetic pang of rapture out of the coming eternities ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sound did come to their ears, but of an entirely different character from the one they were hoping to catch. A granddaddy bullfrog on some mossy log sent out loud and deep-toned demands for "more rum! more rum!" Then a saucy bluejay started in to scold the fellows in the boats for daring to trespass in its preserves, and how the angry bird did lay it on until they were well beyond ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... Boaz mingled there With the soft murmur of the mossy rills. It was the month when earth is debonnaire; The lilies were in flower upon ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... who is very prominent in society should not make herself too common; she should not appear in too many charades, private theatricals, tableaux, etc. She should think of the "violet by the mossy stone." She must, also, at a watering-place remember that every act of hers is being criticised by a set of lookers-on who are not all friendly, and she must, ere she allow herself to be too much of a belle, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... banquet-board—a board literally as well as figuratively—from which many a feast, seasoned as no viands were elsewhere, had been eaten in Rainbow Valley. It was converted into a table by propping it on two large, mossy stones. Newspapers served as tablecloth, and broken plates and handleless cups from Susan's discard furnished the dishes. From a tin box secreted at the root of a spruce tree Nan brought forth bread and salt. The brook gave Adam's ale of unsurpassed crystal. For the rest, there was ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... one blow of the enchanter's wand, and just at the end, where the rod might have rested in its downward sweep, is the fathomless well whose over-brimming fulness gives birth to the Sorgues. We climbed up over the mossy rocks and sat down in the grotto beside the dark, still pool. It was the most ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the mountain-tops, mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns, and the sorrowful lamentations of a maiden who sighs and expires on the mossy tomb of the warrior by whom she was adored. I meet this bard with silver hair; he wanders in the valley; he seeks the footsteps of his fathers, and, alas! he finds only their tombs. Then, contemplating the pale moon, ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... to a place where the road turned through a small patch of woods. It was green and shady, and enlivened by a lively chatterbox of a brook. There was a mossy trunk of a tree that had fallen beside it, and made a pretty seat. The moonlight lay in little patches upon it, as it streamed down through the branches of the trees. It was a fairy-looking place, and Mary stopped and sat down, as if to collect her thoughts. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... their pendant branches in the stream that foamed and rippled over green, mossy stones. In a meadow that stretched fair and wide on either side of the water, innumerable grasshoppers were singing their song of summer. On a verdant bank reclined a man, whose advanced age might be indicated in his whitening locks, but whose bright eyes, and the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... the whole house at my disposal: it is very old, and dates at least from the time of the Goths, as may be seen by the wooden joists crossed on the narrow front and by the mossy tiles. It has but one window on each floor. The one on the first floor is all the year round garnished with flowers, strings are attached, and all sorts of climbers run up them in springtime. My good old mother ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... at her feet, And the day is fading down to the night, And close at her pillow, and round and sweet, The red rose burns like a lamp a-light. Under and over, the gray mist lops, And down and down from the mossy eaves, And down from the sycamore's long wild leaves, The slow rain drops and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... aching localized itself in her right arm, which began to swell. We led her down to the creek and got her to hold it in the cold water and Aggie, being still nervous and unsteady, slipped on a mossy stone and sat down in about a foot of water. It was then that our dear Tish became like herself again, for Aggie was shocked into saying, "Oh, damn!" and Tish gave her ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Maine woods in the neighborhood of a summer hotel. It is the middle of July. The trees are covered with foliage, a hot sun casts dancing shadows upon the mossy ground, and the air is full of the twittering of birds and the rustle of leaves. A winding path crosses from one side to the other, and near the center is a little clearing: the stump of a felled tree, with the lichen-covered ...
— The Noble Lord - A Comedy in One Act • Percival Wilde
... when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the country, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would have said that the long mountain gorges, and the thickly wooded glens into which they opened, were deserted of all life save the squirrels and a few wood birds, but Conny heard a hawk's note from above the cliff, and caught sight of a man silently watching him from behind a mossy log. He laughed a little to himself to think how often he had played the spy in that very hollow, watching to see who came or went from Kilbourne, and then with a word started Doll into a quicker pace. He was at Kilbourne in ample time to meet his passengers, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sharp-shod and sure-footed, so the girls rode as safely as if on the mossy trail, but they had not gone far before Polly ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... during the breeding season are still partially veiled in mystery, as the desolate mossy headlands of Tristan d'Acunha, Inaccessible Island, and other lands lying far to the southward, where the albatross makes its nest, are visited only at rare intervals. The island of Tristan is circular, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... strode into the wood. Deeper and deeper he plunged, headed toward the mountain, feeling the cooling shade of the mighty trees, whose branches met and interlaced overhead. Reaching a mossy bank near a limpid stream, he threw himself down and gave himself up ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... wrap as that. She wanted to see her at once, and she didn't want Mr. Charlie Flint to be along. She went forward with rapid steps to meet her, and slipping an arm within hers, they turned and went slowly back over the mossy path. ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... heads, sentinelled the street, gay lifeguards of autumn; through dark green cedars the crimson creeper threaded its sprays of blood-red; birches, gilded to their tops, swayed to every wind, and drooped their graceful boughs earthward to shower the mossy sward with glittering leaves; heavy oaks turned purple-crimson through their wide-spread boughs; and the stately chestnuts, with foliage of tawny yellow, opened wide their stinging husks to let the nuts fall for squirrel and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... they sat down on a low mossy bank, and Lucy spread out her skirt so that Agnes might sit on it, so as to avoid any chance of taking ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... and what he has found," thought Bobby. "I wish it wasn't such hard work to keep my eyes open." He made a great effort, however, and raised his heavy lids. At first he could see nothing. Then he caught a glimpse of a mossy log, with a row of frogs and toads sitting upon it. They were looking solemnly at him. Bobby felt a little ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the color-splashed town rose the square tower of the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... was going home through the Dargle, he sat down on a mossy stone, and fell to thinking of his hard lot, and wondering what Providence had against the O'Dalys, that he had not been made a lord, or at least, a ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first crack of the ice jam in the Allegheny River, the finding of a violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round Corners—these are the advance signs of the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... set it down, as though he wanted it to walk off with him. At length, after failing in this, it seemed to me as if he were going to start off and carry the child with him. When I saw this I knew that I must now try and shoot him. So I crawled along on the mossy ground, and dodged from tree to tree until I was very near him. Once or twice I was going to shoot, but I was afraid of hitting the child. All at once I saw him drop the cradle and straighten himself up and listen. He ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... were scattered about under the shade of a huge spreading oak tree, waiting for the roast venison, which sent a very pleasant odor from the glowing fire of oak wood, and young Robin was seated on the mossy grass close by the thatched shed which formed the captain's headquarters, where Maid Marian was busy spreading the supper for the little party who ate with ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... self appointed jury faced their victim and tried to look him down; then slowly recognized something that made them uneasy, and one by one each pair of eyes save two, were vanquished and turned embarrassedly away, or sought the pattern of the mossy carpet. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... the spell was broken by the voice of Roger the footman, who had approached noiselessly along the mossy track. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Backwards up the mossy glen Turned and trooped the goblin men, With their shrill repeated cry, "Come buy, come buy." When they reached where Laura was They stood stock still upon the moss, Leering at each other, Brother with queer brother; ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... hot day, about midsummer, Woodwender and Loveleaves sat down in the shadow of a mossy rock. The swine grazed about them more quietly than usual; and the children plaited rushes and talked to each other, till, as the sun was sloping down the sky, Woodwender saw that the two ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... wet, Northrup now went. He did not pause at the mossy rock that had hitherto marked his limit. He sternly strode ahead over unbroken underbrush and reached ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... it the valley of the Staunton stretches southward about three miles, varying from a quarter to nearly a mile in width, and of an oval-like form. Through most fertile meadows waving in their golden luxuriance, slowly winds the river, overhung by mossy foliage, while on all sides gently sloping hills, rich in verdure, enclose the whole, and impart to it an air of seclusion and repose. From the brow of the hill, west of the house, is a scene of an entirely ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... the rolling hills like ribbons of dental cream squeezed out evenly on rich green velour. Chateaux, pearl white centres in settings of emerald green, push their turrets and bastions above the mossy plush of the mountain side. Lazy little streams silver the valleys with ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... but he leaned forward and struck a match. "It is a cave!" he cried, and put his knee on the mossy stone he had been sitting on, ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... walls of gray stone, half covered with clinging ficus, spanned by broken arches, with here and there a fallen urn, led them through picturesque turns and by mossy steps to the foot of the huge black cross erected before the empty church. Neither spoke; they did not care for words and the only expression which framed itself audibly was that oft repeated jubilate of health and youth, "How beautiful it is ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... the bank of the little brook, which rippled over green, mossy stones, Bunny and Sue had fun just tossing in bits of wood and bark, making believe they were boats. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... plant with delicate flower and trefoil leaves grows on many mossy banks, especially on one ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... over the wet ground. The small yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched it moving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand, now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and now illuminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the one bright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon an elevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing upon the night. As he looked a great peace fell over him, and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... turn," and he patted the good steed as it sucked up the refreshing water, and Walter proceeded to release it from saddle and bridle. Edmund, meanwhile, stretched himself out on the mossy bank, asked a few questions about his mother, Rose, and the other children, but was too tired to say much, and presently fell sound asleep, while Walter sat by watching him, grieving for the battle lost, but proud ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thanksgiving, or more earnest supplications for future protection, than the band of veterans seated on that mossy bank, while about them was the confusion of a great army, pressing to ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... "By yon mossy boulder, see an ebony shoulder, Dazzling the beholder, rises o'er the blue; But a moment's thinking, sends the Naiad sinking, With a modest shrinking, from the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... three little girls were in the woods with dear Miss Grey and baby Susie, who was just three years old. Betty was walking a little behind the others with her eyes fixed on the ground. It was damp and mossy, and there was a thick growth of ferns and underwood at the side of the path. Suddenly she saw something move quickly through this, and disappear down a hole. She stopped and moved aside the ferns and moss. What do you think she saw sitting comfortably ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... home farm, sometimes at the foot of garden or orchard. Such is noticeably the case throughout Narragansett; almost every farm has a grave-yard, now generally unused and deserted. Sometimes the burying-place is enclosed by a high mossy stone wall, often it is overgrown with dense sombre firs or hemlocks, or half shaded with airy locust-trees. Beautifully ideal and touching is the thought of these old Narragansett planters resting with their wives and children ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... This conjecture I hazard, as I have never met with any one that has seen them in England in the winter. I believe they are not fond of going near the water, but feed on earth-worms, that are common on sheep-walks and downs. They breed on fallows and lay-fields abounding with grey mossy flints, which much resemble their young in colour; among which they skulk and conceal themselves. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground, producing in common but two at a time. There ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... intense longing to behold once more the woods and fields where she had rambled in her happy childhood; to wander by the pleasant streams, and sit under the favorite trees; to see the primrose and violet gemming the mossy banks of the dear hedge-rows, to hear the birds sing among the hawthorn blossoms; and, surrounded by the fondly-remembered sights and sounds of beauty, to recall the sweet dreams ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie |
