"Sedge" Quotes from Famous Books
... forest land. It has completed the entire cycle of land use. Originally it supported magnificent stands of hardwood timber. This timber was cut and the lands devoted to farming. Poor management and erosion soon depleted the supply of top soil and many areas were abandoned to broom sedge, blackberries and gullies. Because it was close enough to the surface the coal has been removed and the areas replanted to many of the same ... — Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... with it Into the hedge, Or a reed-warbler Down in the sedge? Are they carousing there, All the night through? Such a great ... — The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at ... — Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... seeds, small snail shells, worms and larvae of insects, which they extract from the mud. The habits of the Sora Rail, its thin, compressed body, its aversion to take wing, and the dexterity with which it runs or conceals itself among the grass and sedge, are exactly similar to those of ... — Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... arise the smoke of a cabin fire; nor a quiet lake, in which, in the months of flowers and fruits, you would not see Indian maidens laving their dusky limbs. The wild duck found no rest in his sunny slumber on the banks of Menemshe, the pokeshawit could no longer hide in the sedge, on the banks of his favourite Quampeche, and the deer, that went to quench his thirst in the Monnemoy, found the unerring arrow of the ... — Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... nothing quieter in all Surrey than this little path by the tiny river, with the bank on one side rich with roses and elderflower, and on the other the sunlight gleaming on the chestnut coats of the cattle moving slowly through the sedge. Here is an old oak bridge, solid and lichened; here, facing the stream, a high bank of white sand, bored and tunnelled by sand-martins; a little further, and the brushwood flames with the pink and crimson spires of a thousand foxgloves. The grassy path runs on, until on a sudden bend ... — Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... island's edge, midst tangled sedge, Lay a wreath of wild flow'rs blue— The broad flag-leaf was their sweet relief, When the heat too fervid grew; And the willow's shade a shelter made, When stormy ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... of sedge rush, common in swampy places in the West India islands, the Adme cyperus, enjoys a reputation for the cure of yellow fever. It is also stated to be cordial, diuretic and cephalic, serviceable in the first stages of the dropsy, good in ... — The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... entirely new. When they reached Spoon Island he went into raptures over it, for it was a rarity, even among the many beautiful ones he had visited. As its name implied, it was shaped like a spoon, about five hundreds rods long and formed of white sand, with a growth of green sedge grass all over it. On the broadest part was a cluster of spruce forming a little thicket and beside this, and entered by a narrow inlet the tiniest bit of a harbor, just large enough to shelter a small sloop. The seagulls had also discovered its beauty, for thousands hovered ... — Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... me the natural magic of music. Have you ever walked on long afternoons in warm, sunny spots of the woods, and felt a sudden thrill strike you with the half fear that a ghost would rise out of the sedge, or dart from behind the next tree, and ... — Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... fellow, with a kind of shame-faced culture, and my good friend. His father kept a general store in a little town called Hosea. Pettit had been raised in the pine-woods and broom-sedge fields adjacent thereto. He had in his gripsack two manuscript novels of the adventures in Picardy of one Gaston Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos, in the year 1329. That's nothing. We all do that. And some day when we make a hit with the ... — The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... opposite side of the district, belonging to an alluvial soil, washed down from the chalk hills. The great reed-mace adorns the Itchen, and going along the disused towing path of the canal there is to be found abundance of the black and golden spikes of the sedge, and the curious balls of the bur-reed, very like the horrid German weapon called a morning star. Also meadow-sweet, meadow-rue, and comfrey of every shade of purple, the water avens and forget-me-not, also that loveliest plant ... — John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... fluff from the cattail's crest, 'Mid the juniper boughs is hung; And further on, by the elder hedge, Where the turtles come out to sleep, The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet's edge, Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge, 'Mid the shadows ... — Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with reedy fens; Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd; Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens, To you I fly, ye with my ... — The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... few minutes Pete stopped at the edge of a hollow, where, half covered by sedge rushes and bog plantain, there lay a good-sized pool of clear water, down to which Tom made his way, followed by his companion, and after taking a hearty draught, which was wonderfully clear and refreshing, ... — The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... fowls of air. Stretched on a bank, beneath the cold, clear sky, Lay good AEneas, fain at length to share Late slumber, troubled by the war with care. When, 'twixt the poplars, where the fair stream flows, With azure mantle, and with sedge-crowned hair, The aged Genius of the place uprose, And, standing by, thus spake, and ... — The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... streaming in the wind. It soon became evident that he was flying from some terrific object, for he had thrown down his gun, and, in his panic, he was taking the shortest line towards us, which lay across a swamp covered with sedge and rushes that greatly impeded his progress, and prevented us approaching him, or seeing what was the cause of his flight. Missing his steps from one hard spot to another he repeatedly fell into the water, but he rose and resumed his flight. I advanced as ... — Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... she said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery foliage formed ... — The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the loneliness of this big nature which worked around me. The dog dignified the situation—he was a part of nature's belongings—while I somehow did not seem to grace the solitude. The grays slowly grew into browns on the sedge-grass, and the water to silver. A bright flash of fire shot out of the dusk far up in the gloom, and the dull report of a shot-gun came over the tank. Black objects fled across the sky—the ducks were ... — Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... gorse, or great gray bowlders, so that impressions of Scotch moorlands alternated with those of an Arizona desert. The tang of September was in the breeze; from the moorlands which overlooked the jagged Brenton reefs came the faint aroma of burning sedge; from the wet distant cliff a saline exhalation was wafted. It was such a morning as one can see and feel only on ... — Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... asked us for a week; after that, Hot Springs for another two weeks or so; after that, to Oyster Bay. ... Mr. Quarrier opens his house on Sedge Point," she added demurely, "but I don't think he expects to ... — The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... do well enough, but we don't approve of such forward ways," sighed Mrs. Bob. "No," chimed in Mrs. Mate Hare, limping from her home in the broom sedge. "It's not safe, with that horrid little Nip so near; to be sure, they've got wings, but as for me, he just frightens the life out of me, with his nosing and sniffing; forever nosing and sniffing after some mischief." And she wiggled her nose and ears and looked so funny that the Bob Whites almost ... — Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... summer rain on grass and bush and hedge, Reddening the road and deepening the green On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge; Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen But dimly on the far ... — The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... too soon. I wandered down to the pebbly shore of the Rance, where bare-footed children, sent out to look after pigs and geese, were building castles with the many-coloured stones, while others on the rocky banks above were singing in chorus, like a somewhat louder twittering of sedge warblers from the fringe of willows. I wandered on until all was quiet save the water, and returned to the inn when the fire on the hearth was sending forth a cheerful red glow through the dusk. The soup was bubbling in the chain pot, and a well-browned ... — Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... times the more melodious note of a trumpeter swan; or from the top of a tall cottonwood, or cypress, the sharp saw-filing shriek of the white-headed eagle, angered by some stray creature coming too close, and startling it from its slumbers. Below, out of the swamp sedge, rises the mournful cry of the quabird—the American bittern—and from the same, the deep sonorous bellow of that ugliest animal ... — The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... anemones, coral beds, shells, and fish, discovered in the ocean world. The richest treasures of Davy Jones's Locker lie open to view, as the boat glides through the ever-changing scenery mirrored in the transparent sea. Opalescent berries resemble heaps of pearls, and the lemon stalks of marine sedge gleam like wedges of gold in the crystalline depths. The long oars detach pinnacles of coral like tongues of flame, and a cargo of seaweed, shells, and anemones, fills the boat as each enchanted grotto ... — Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... been three days at a place called Grez, a pretty and very melancholy village on the plain. A low bridge of many arches choked with sedge; great fields of white and yellow water-lilies; poplars and willows innumerable; and about it all such an atmosphere of sadness and slackness, one could do nothing but get into the boat and out of it again, ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way off from where he had slept, a small brook wound its way through the sedge grass. Tom welcomed it with a grin, for he had not had a bath since he ... — Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... farm looking over Clew Bay towards Clare Island, and all was apparently smooth and pleasant. No sooner, however, was Mr. Hunter established there than a difficulty arose. The inhabitants of the surrounding country had been in the habit of cutting turf and pulling sedge on parts of the mountain and bog included within the limits of Mr. Hunter's farm. It is only fair to the memory of the deceased gentleman to state that such rights are frequently paid for, and that he had not taken ... — Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness of the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the distinction of its points, its needles, and ... — Essays • Alice Meynell
... swiftly forward at its own sweet will, brought me into a bight, a bare, desolate-looking country with no vegetation save grass and sedge on the near marshes and stony hills rising up beyond, with others beyond them mounting step by step to a long line of ridges and peaks still covered in ... — Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... looking like a meadow, beyond. Not intrinsically much of an affair. The beach, on close inspection, proved soft and dirty, the grass sedge, the meadow a bog. In the distance, however, and as a variety in this unswarded cliff-coast, it was sweet, I laugh now to think how sweet, ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the fog is sure for at least a good half of the time. The sides of the castle towards the channel show no light at all; and even when you're once through the outlying islets, the only approach is masked by a movable bed of sedge which I contrived, and which turns you skilfully back into the marsh by another way. No; you might float around there for days but ... — Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... fifty deep-tongued hounds, Actaeon. I beheld him not far off, But unto bath and bathers hid from view, Being beyond that mighty rock whereon His wont was to be stretched at dip of eve, When frogs are loud amid the tall-plumed sedge In marshy spots about Asopus' bank,— Deeming his life was very sweet, his day A pleasant one, the peopled breadths of earth Most fair, and fair the shining tracts of sea; Green solitudes, and broad ... — In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rein, o'er grassy mead, through ferny hollows, o'erleaping chattering rill that babbled to the moon, 'mid swaying reeds and whispering sedge, past crouching bush and stately tree, and so at last they reached the woods. By shadowy brake and thicket, through pools of radiant moonlight, through leafy, whispering glooms they held their way, across broad glade and clearing, on ... — The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... and glanced up and down, it was a picture indeed. The river made little bends, and wound around tiny points, edged with the greenest of sedge grass in some places, then grey stones with mossy sea-growth, or willows dipping their branches in the lightly ruffled water. Not a soul to be seen anywhere, not a sound save the voices of birds; but while they looked, a flock of geese came floating ... — A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... inhabitants Calandria, is remarkable, from possessing a song far superior to that of any other bird in the country: indeed, it is nearly the only bird in South America which I have observed to take its stand for the purpose of singing. The song may be compared to that of the Sedge warbler, but is more powerful; some harsh notes and some very high ones, being mingled with a pleasant warbling. It is heard only during the spring. At other times its cry is harsh and far from harmonious. Near Maldonado these birds were tame and bold; they constantly attended ... — The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... fishing lines; and the stock, left by the Baron de Lery long ago, had multiplied and now overran the island. Wild fowl, too, teemed on the inland lake; and foxes, which must have drifted ashore on the ice float of spring, ran wild through the sedge. ... — Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... before the splash of alighting, from a thick cover of sedge across the pool came two sharp spurts of flame, one after the other, followed by two thunderous reports, so close together as to seem almost like one. Turning straight over, the leader fell upon the water with a heavy splash; and immediately after him dropped his second in leadership, the strong ... — The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ear. Overhead the broad leaves hung motionless on their stems; the delicate reed-stalks off in the pearly haze stood up arrowy-straight; occasionally a home-returning bee shot humming athwart the shade, and a partridge creeping from the sedge drank, whistled to his mate, and ran away. The restfulness of the vale, the freshness of the air, the garden beauty, the Sabbath stillness, seemed to have affected the spirits of the elder Egyptian; his voice, gestures, and whole manner were ... — Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of the bayou, as motionless as a sleeping snake under its misty covert—to continue the poetical language or thought. The ripples ran frightened and shivering into the rooty thicknesses of the sedge-grown banks, startling the little birds bathing there into darting to the nearest, highest rush-top, where, without losing their hold on their swaying, balancing perches, they burst into all sorts of ... — Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... looking just now more like an ill-made turnpike road than the bed of Alva stream; above it, a long shallow pool, which showed every stone through the transparent water; on the right, a craggy bank, bedded with deep wood sedge and orange-tipped king ferns, clustering beneath sallow and maple bushes already tinged with gold; on the left, a long bar of gravel, covered with giant "butter-bur" leaves; in and out of which the hounds are brushing—beautiful black-and-tan dogs, of which poor Trebooze ... — Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... darkness comes the melancholy hoot of the barn owl, while nearer some bird is singing very softly—either a blackcap or a sedge-warbler. The curlew is saying good-night to the lapwing on the hill. By the edge of the growing corn is heard, iterative and wearisome, the "crake," ... — Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... admit it; and yet that close observer, John Burroughs, gives a charming account of these little frogs that we call 'hylas' for short. Shy as they are, and quick to disappear when approached, he has seen them, as they climb out of the mud upon a sedge or stick in the marshes, inflate their throats until they 'suggest a little drummer-boy with his drum hung high.' In this bubble-like swelling at its throat the noise is made; and to me it is a welcome note of spring, although I have heard ... — Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... crossed, but were riding away from the station and toward the ranch, evidently bent on attacking it next. The flames from the burning train rose high above the creek. There seemed no place to escape to and Bucks, creeping through the sedge grass, got back to his key and called ... — The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... books, his Cato's Maxims, or perchance his Confabulationes Pueriles, under the garden hedge, and skirting the town, makes his way along the river. And there, hidden among the willows and green alders and rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock ... — A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... single destruction. And now the dreadful day was at hand; the rites were being ordered for me, the salted corn, and the chaplets to wreathe my temples. I broke away, I confess it, from death; I burst my bonds, and lurked all night darkling in the sedge of the marshy pool, till they might set their sails, if haply they should set them. Nor have I any hope more of seeing my old home nor my sweet children and the father whom I desire. Of them will they even haply claim vengeance for my flight, and wash away this ... — The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... silence—long enough to hear the music from the house, and the distant voices of the dancers. A little northwest wind was creeping over the lake, and stirring the scents of the grasses and sedge-plants on its banks. Helena looked round to see in what direction they ... — Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for the widow, the forsaken, or the devout for centuries; in the valley of the Nar—the Norfolk Holy Land—where seven monasteries of one sort or another clustered, each distant from the other but a few short miles—among the ooze and sedge and chill loneliness of the Broads, where the tall reeds wave and whisper, and all else is silent—the glorious buildings with their sumptuous churches were little better than centres of contagion. From the stricken towns people fled to the monasteries, lying ... — The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... more worthy to enjoy—creations which the floods covered with their secret veils of silver; and now these noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and calls forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and enwreathing tufts of sedge. ... — Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... a deer looked at him from sedge, furry ears forward; stamped, winded him, and, not frightened very much, trotted into the dwarf willows, halting once ... — The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... fortunes! A little brook was now before them; and Alan said, "This river must be crossed, and I hope that none of us will be carried away by the current. What we shall do if an Indian springs from behind the bushes, or a crocodile comes out of the sedge, I don't know. Here is the narrowest part of the river. I will lay my stick across it; and, if we make believe very much, it will ... — The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... their talk, and Eustacia left him. Clym watched her as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the poorest blade. There was something ... — The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... golden-green—and now and then encountering and making their wings rustle as they touched in rapid flight. Then as he stood with his hand resting against a tree trunk, peering forward, a curious little head with bright crimson eyes divided the sedge or reeds growing in the water, its owner looking out to see if there was any danger; and as it looked, Robin could see that the bird's beak seemed to be continued right up into a fiat red ... — Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... Here, then, was one of the few marshes in Judea. The road by a series of arches crossed it and continued up the shoulder of the hills toward the east. All about it flourished the young growth of the rough sedge grass, green as emerald. The spot was treeless and marked with broad ... — The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... house!" Paul Nicholas exclaimed, gazing with a shudder upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant, eye-like windows in a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre along the ... — Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... damm'st it up, the more it burns; The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage: And so by many winding nooks he strays, With willing ... — Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... him. Close to the hot-spring, and forming a sort of "lean-to" against the cliff, you may observe a rude hut built with blocks of stone, and plastered with mud from the bed of the rivulet. Enter it. You will find it empty, cold, untenanted by living thing. No furniture. Stone couches covered with sedge and grass, upon which men may have slept or lain; and two or three blocks of granite upon which they may have sat. That is all. Some pieces of skin hanging around the walls, and the bones of animals strewed over the ground outside, give a clue to the ... — The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with ... — Selections From American Poetry • Various
... nest upon the north side of the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes it upon the south or east side, and makes it much thicker and warmer. I have seen one from the South that had some kind of coarse reed or sedge woven into it, giving it an open-work ... — Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... upon a flock of gigantic wild sheep, feeding on scanty tufts of dried sedge and grass; there were twenty-five of these enormous animals, of whose dimensions the term sheep gives no idea: they are very long-legged, stand as high as a calf, and have immense horns, so large that the fox is said ... — Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... they bear. Now came the evil day; for me the rites do men prepare, The salted cakes, the holy strings to do my brows about. I needs must say I brake my bonds, from Death's house gat me out, And night-long lay amid the sedge by muddy marish side Till they spread sail, if they perchance should win their sailing tide. Nor have I hope to see again my fatherland of old; My longed-for father and sweet sons I never shall behold; On whom the guilt of me who fled mayhappen men will lay, And with their death for ... — The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... many-tinted trees on one side, and out beyond a range of low hills, purple in the evening light. In the sky was a rosy sunset glow, melted above into saffron color, and this was reflected in the water, gilding and mellowing the foreground of sedge and water lilies. But what made the picture specially charming was that the artist had really caught the peculiar solemn stillness of evening; merely to look at that quiet, peaceful river brought a feeling of hush and calmness. It seemed a strange picture ... — We Two • Edna Lyall
... forest eaves, Shingled tight with greenest leaves, Sweep the scented meadow-sedge, Let us snoop along the edge; Let us pry in hidden nooks, Laden with our nature books, Scaring birds with happy cries, Chloroforming butterflies, Rooting up each woodland plant, Pinning beetle, fly, and ant, So we may identify What we've ... — In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... that, though the regular season for hawking did not commence till October, he had ever on his wrist some young falcon to essay, or some old favourite to exercise. And now, just as William was beginning to grow weary of his good cousin's prolix recitals, the hounds suddenly gave tongue, and from a sedge-grown pool by the way-side, with solemn wing and harsh boom, ... — Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wings; where slimy dragon things watch from the water's edge; where Greek slaves sweat at indigo-vats that draw vultures like carrion; where black men, toiling, sing all day on the sea-islands, plucking cotton-blossoms; where monstrous horrors, hornless and legless, wallow out to the sedge ... — The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... no more regret nor old deep memories to mar the bliss; where the low sedge is thick, the gold day-lily outspreads and rests beneath soft fluttering of red swan wings and the warm quivering of ... — Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... creepers. You thought at your first glance among the tree-stems that you were looking through open air; you find that you are looking through a labyrinth of wire-rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at every five steps. You push on into a bed of strong sedge-like Sclerias, with cutting edges to their leaves. It is well for you if they are only three, and not six feet high. In the midst of them you run against a horizontal stick, triangular, rounded, smooth, green. You take a glance along it right and left, and see no end to it either way, ... — At Last • Charles Kingsley
... pipe of perfect peace, and soliloquising): They don't rise yet. But a time will come. Hang it! but this is sweet. Yea, it is good to be here. Now, if that little Waterside Sketches chap was here, let me see, how would he tick it off? Forget-me-nots—and deuced pretty they are; sedge warblers, three; kingfishers, one; rooks melodious; picturesque cottages on the downs nestling—they always put it that way—nestling under the beech wood; balmy air—'tis a trifle nice; cuckoo mentioning ... — Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Silenus emerging from one of the rivers which Bacchus metamorphosed into wine during his campaign in India. He resorted to attrition and contrition, to maceration and laceration; he tried friction with leaves, with grass, with sedge, with his garments; he regarded himself in one crystal pool after another, a grotesque anti-Narcissus. At last he flung himself on the earth, and gave ... — The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... hue displayed in their composition is marvellous. It would be curious to trace in detail the remnants of classical treatment which may be discerned—Jordan, for instance, pours his water from an urn like a river-god crowned with sedge—or to show what points of ecclesiastical tradition are established these ancient monuments. We find Mariolatry already imminent, the names of the three kings, Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the four evangelists as we now recognise ... — Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is in the middle of a great level plain. When the water is high it spreads into a small lake with a belt of sedge around it; when it is low there is a wide flat of black mud, glistening white with alkali in places, and the spring a water-hole in the middle. It has no flow or outlet and is fairly good water, the ... — Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... broken stair with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, [14] By scattered hamlets trace its antient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and sedge ... — Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... pass through the understanding of the scientist. Or one may say, it is with the thoughts and half thoughts that the walker gathers in the woods and fields, as with the common weeds and coarser wild flowers which he plucks for a bouquet,—wild carrot, purple aster, moth mullein, sedge, grass, etc.: they look common and uninteresting enough there in the fields, but the moment he separates them from the tangled mass, and brings them indoors, and places them in a vase, say of some choice glass, amid artificial things,—behold, how beautiful! They ... — A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... turned to meet Hilarius and the Friar who were now coming slowly across the windswept common. March mists gathered and draped the sluggish river; the dry reeds rattled dismally in the ooze and sedge. Hilarius shivered, and the Friar ... — The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... huddled in the grass. The least shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he distinguished at once as a rabbit, a glinting flash from a tree top he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement of a hidden squirrel, and the quiver of a single stem of sedge grass told him of a bevy of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all the skill of the Indian, has more industry in his loafing, and kills without pity and without restraint. This grandson of Uncle Ike was growing sulky, too, with the knowledge that the white ... — Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... brooks, where love and sorrow run Crowned with sedge and singing wild, Like a sky-lark—or a child!— Old blind Moone, he knew their springs, and played 'em every one; Stood there, in the darkness, blind, And sang them into Shakespeare's mind.... Old blind Moone of London, O now ... — The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. It was that fatal and perfidious bark Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge, Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. "Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?" Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy keys he bore, ... — Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... he cried.—"Help!—Clear the sedge! Strip bare a circle to the land!" That done, he hastened to its edge, And grasped a rifle in his hand: Dried weeds he held beside the pan, Which kindled at a flash the mass! "Now fire fight fire!" he said, as ran The forked ... — Poems • George P. Morris
... old oak tree, Where waters ripple over clean white stones, And cresses, mint with feathered fern grown high. In such a place the peaceful thoughts will come; There is no hurry there where nature plays. Soft gentle breezes wave the grass and sedge; White fluffy clouds pass overhead and roll. Now dreaming, I hear the cricket's gay song. O river bank you charm me ... — Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... sings its tender song In osage thicket, or in locust hedge, But pipes its notes the negro boys among, On cotton plant, or Alabama sedge. ... — Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... reclaimed by drainage, the armies found some of these marshes extending continuously for over 200 miles. In the upper Pripet basin the woods were everywhere full of countless little channels which creep through a wilderness of sedge. Along the right bank of the Pripet River the land rises above the level of the water and is fairly thickly populated. Elsewhere extends a great intricate network of streams with endless fields of bulrushes and stunted woods. Over these bogs hang unhealthy vapors, ... — The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the white lilies quiver By the sedge in the river, I fly in and out, I hunt all about; For I am the ... — The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... flat-bottomed for the shallowest shore, Dropped down to west, and crossed our frontage here. Seen from above they specked the water-shine As will a flight of swallows toward dim eve, Descending on a smooth and loitering stream To seek some eyot's sedge. ... — The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... whose hand in Autumn Painted all the trees with scarlet, Stained the leaves with red and yellow; He it was who sent the snow-flake, Sifting, hissing through the forest, Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, Drove the cormorant and curlew To their nests of sedge and sea-tang ... — The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... the pirates, he saw the three figures again in the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of sand covered with coarse sedge-grass, he came to where he overlooked a little open level space gleaming ... — Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... two nights later LeGrand Blossom left his boarding place and met a veiled woman at a lonely spot on the beach, Colonel Ashley, who had been waiting as he so well knew how to do, hid himself on the sand behind some sedge grass and began to think that the game was coming his ... — The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... factories, and led along, with the brightly glassy sheet of water on one side, and the steep wooded slope on the other, loose-strife and meadow-sweet growing thickly on the bank, amid long weeds with feathery tops, rich brown fingers of sedge, and bur-reeds like German morgensterns, while above the long wreaths of dog-roses projected, the sweet honeysuckle twined about, and the white blossoms of traveller's joy hung in festoons from the hedge of the bordering plantation. ... — Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and sedge and weeping willow, by roaring weir and cavernous lock, into the shadow of grim stone bridges and out again into the sunshine, past shady woods and green uplands until at length we "cast anchor" before a flight ... — My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... came he wrapped part of it in the paper and buried it among the sedge; the rest he put in his basket and his pockets. Early morning saw him, an inconspicuous, frowsy figure, slouching up to a way station on the ... — Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... a broad surface of gold, beautiful to look down upon, with islands of tenderest birch green interspersed, and willows in which the sedge-reedling chattered. They used to say in the country that cuckoos were getting scarce, but here the notes of the cuckoo echoed all day long, and the birds often flew over the house. Doves cooed, blackbirds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the ... — Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the scene. Black clouds, driven fast before the stormy wind, Swept shadowing; thro' their broken folds the moon Struggled sometimes with transitory ray, And made the moving darkness visible. And now arrived beside a fenny lake She stands: amid its stagnate waters, hoarse The long sedge rustled to the gales of night. An age-worn bark receives the Maid, impell'd By powers unseen; then did the moon display Where thro' the crazy vessel's yawning side The muddy wave oozed in: a female guides, And spreads the sail before the wind, that moan'd As melancholy mournful to her ear, ... — Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... full of wild-folk that apparently deserted reed-patch was. Each bit of the landscape, each typical portion, is a world of its own, with its special kind of population. This one produced unexpectedly a pair of sedge-warblers and a reed-warbler, atoms who gyrated and grated their annoyance; a willow-tit, who made needle-point rebukes; a water-rail, with a long beak and long legs, running away like a long-legged pullet; a moorhen very ... — The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... all round here. There is a river but it has no current to speak of, and, lying snugly tucked up in its coverlet of floating weeds, seems to think—"Since it is possible to get on without getting along, why should I bestir myself to stir?" So the sedge which lines the banks knows hardly any disturbance until the fishermen come with ... — Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... marshes and covered with tall reeds. In the midst of this landscape a large lake opens to the view. Its aspect is sombre and sad—its dark, turbid waters scarce reflecting the stars that shine so brilliantly over it; while the waves beating against its sedge-encircled shores, utter only the ... — The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... each other on the back and called each other "Seth" and "Joe," and, keeping behind banks lest they be seen by young uns, they shamefacedly paddled barefoot—two old men with bare feet and silvery shanks, chuckling and catching crabs, in a salt inlet among rolling hillocks covered with sedge-grass that lisped in the breeze. The grass hollows were filled with quiet and the sound of hovering flies. Beyond was a hill shiny ... — The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 115 Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the ... — The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, The last-left haymaker is gone. And from the thyme upon the height, And from the elder-blossom white And pale dog-roses in the hedge, And from the mint-plant in the sedge, In puffs of balm the night-air blows The perfume which the day forgoes. And on the pure horizon far, See, pulsing with the first-born star, The liquid sky above the hill! The evening comes, the fields are still. Loitering and leaping, With saunter, ... — Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... rivers, his curiosity lessening the fatigue. He went, too, to the Lycian[46] cities, and the Carians, that border upon Lycia. Here he sees a pool of water, clear to the {very} ground at the bottom; here there are no fenny reeds, no barren sedge, no rushes with their sharp points. The water is translucent; but the edges of the pool are enclosed with green turf, and with grass ever verdant. A Nymph dwells {there}; but one neither skilled in hunting, nor accustomed to bend the bow, nor to contend in speed; the ... — The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... And trees in rivalry assume Their vernal garb of bud and bloom. How fair they look, how bright and gay With tasselled flowers on every spray! While each to each proud challenge flings Borne in the song the wild bee sings. That mallard by the river edge Has bathed amid the reeds and sedge: Now with his mate he fondly plays And fires ... — The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself,—a ... — Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... such as those of a grass, sedge, or rush among the monocotyledons, or an oak, hazel, or plantain, among dicotyledons, the flowers are extremely inconspicuous and often reduced to the simplest form. In such plants, the pollen is conveyed from the male flowers to the female by the wind, and ... — Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... closely screened for ruffian winds to shake; And as the bold intruders press around, At once she starts and rises with a bound; With bristles raised the sudden noise they hear, And ludicrously wild and winged with fear, The herd decamp with more than swinish speed, And snorting dash through sedge and rush and reed; Through tangled thickets headlong on they go, Then stop and listen for their fancied foe; The hindmost still the growing panic spreads, Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds, Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap; Yet glorying in their fortunate escape, Their groundless ... — Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the man's footsteps died away along the quiet road. The peace of the evening was not broken by the notes of the sedge-warblers or by the voice of the woman in the barge, singing her baby to sleep. It was a sad song she sang. Something about Bill Bailey and how she wanted him ... — The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... donjon bars, Where the Danube clamours through sedge and sand, And he cursed with a curse his revolting land, - With a king's deep ... — Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... furrow and sheepfold, and the yield of his lands grew under his wardenship. He brought heavy French cattle to improve the little native breed, and made a garden of fruit trees where once had been only bent and sedge. The thralls wrought cheerfully for him, for he was a kindly master, and the freemen of the manor had no complaint against one who did impartial justice and respected their slow and ancient ... — The Path of the King • John Buchan
... gipsy wife came to my door with pegs and brooms to sell They make by many a roadside fire and many a greenwood dell, With bee-skeps and with baskets wove of osier, rush and sedge, And withies from the river-beds and ... — Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... and its foaming, and now glided under the bridges that spanned the narrower windings of the river. The wooden bathing-house looked awesome enough to harbour mysteries. Another sharp turn, among sedge and rushes, and the outlying streets of the town were on their right. The boat-sheds were in darkness, when they drew up alongside the narrow landing-place. Maurice got out with the chain in his hand, and secured the boat. Louise did not ... — Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... pearl, the soft tree-tent Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail The silver globules ... — The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... following the pirates, he saw the three figures again in the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of sand covered with coarse sedge grass, he came to where he overlooked a little open level space ... — Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... blue, sunlit arch overhead, the waving trees that sent dancing shadows like troops of elfin sprites over the water, the fret in one place where a rock broke the murmurous lapping, the swish somewhere else, where grasses and weeds and water blooms rooted in the sedge rocked back and forth with the slow tide—how ... — A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... called to this day the Gold Spring, is the deadliest spot on earth to those who bear your name. Far as the wood extends on either side, extended formerly the turf-pit. The deep moor is covered now by an unsteady earth-crust, overgrown with pale red sedge, and from its centre, as from a grotto, the beautiful rivulet ripples forth that irrigates and renders fruitful all your land. I doubt not that this grotto, with its golden vault of granite, is the very spring into which the furious Wittehold ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... fierce Day-star's blazing ball their sight Sears with excess of light; Or through dun sand-clouds the blue scimitar's edge Slopes down like fire from heaven, Mowing them as the thatcher mows the sedge. ... — The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... holding on by a tuft of coarse sedge, watching him as he threw himself on his side, and went off pretty close to the bank, where the water was eddying; and the next minute he was beyond a clump of sedge that projected into the river, and ... — Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... were lived yonder in that low grange, crouching under the five melancholy poplars? An hour later father and son would go forth in that treacherous quaking boat, lying amid the sedge, and cast their net into one of those black pools. But these pictures of primeval simplicities which the landscape evoked were not in accord with a journey toward love and pleasure. Evelyn and Owen did not dare to contrast their lives ... — Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... all came recollections of the college, the old, dank convent, that extended as far as the town ramparts; the two courtyards with their huge plane trees; the slimy sedge-covered pond, where they had learned to swim, and the class-rooms with dripping plaster walls on the ground floor; then the refectory, with its atmosphere constantly poisoned by the fumes of dish-water; the dormitory of the little ones, famous for its horrors, the linen room, and ... — His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... skirting the bolder bank where the pines bent heavy heads over the water, the holly crowded close to the shore, and pale tinted reeds made border at the water's edge. Now in rounding a curve, we passed close to the cypress wood fringed with bush and sedge. Delicate brown festoons of vines hung from the branches; and, high out of reach, mats of mistletoe clung. It seemed one with our mood and our fancy when two round yellow eyes stared out of the shadows, ... — Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... a fit of shyness when the day came for her arrival. It was a clear frosty afternoon, with a keen turquoise sky overhead, and she wandered out in her habit down the slope to the moat, crossed the bridge, glancing at the thin ice and the sedge that pierced it, and came up into the private garden. She knew she could hear the sounds of wheels from there, and had an instinctive shrinking from being at the ... — The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... his life to slip by until his seventieth year was reached, before he would print them, and when they appeared, he could not find the courage to put his name on the title-page. Not one of his own titlarks or sedge-warblers could be more shy of public observation. Even the fact that his own brother was a publisher gave him no real ... — Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... Giffard), who had been slumbering between two painted boards, respectively inscribed "MIDDLESEX COUNTY BANK" and "SURREY BANK," and surrounded by flower-pots filled with bulrushes and sedge, roused by the intended imprecation upon their host, here interrupted Egomet, and entered into a long dialogue with him, in which he detailed all his grievances so far as gas and steam were concerned. At ... — A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... clumps of sedge. Vassenka Veslovsky was the first to run after the dog. Before Stepan Arkadyevitch had time to come up, a grouse flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an unmown meadow. This grouse was left for Veslovsky to follow ... — Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... carpet; but it was a sadly dirty arrangement, and gives us a very poor idea of the cleanliness of even the best houses, though it probably was not the custom all through the year, as Newton says, speaking of Sedges, but evidently confusing the Sedge with the Sweet-scented Rush, "with the which many in this countrie do use in sommer time to straw their parlours and churches, as well for cooleness as for pleasant smell."[266:1] This Rush (Acorus calamus) is a British plant, with broad leaves, which have a ... — The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... heavy guns opened fire upon them and swept them off in files as they rushed on, and in the intervals of reloading the cavalry charged into their midst. By this time the Tlascalans had come up, having by order of Cortes bound wreaths of sedge about their heads that they might be the more easily distinguished from the Cholulans, and they fell upon the rear of the wretched townsmen, who, thus harassed on all sides, could no longer maintain their ground. They fled, some to the near ... — The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... eyes are twin mountain lakes, and the lashes of them Like the swishing sedge That hideth ... — Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... cushions of bright green moss and hangings of polypody, and whortleberries grow upon them. Every step between the trees is perilous, among the uneven crowded masses of rocks and half-concealed clefts. Many of the boulders are moss-covered, a kind of sedge and long, flag-like grass spring among the crevices and add to the pitfalls, and the whole wood really has the air of having been bewitched. Mrs Bray's impressions of it are interesting. She found the slope 'strewn' all over with immense masses ... — Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... country round the gulf was well-grassed, particularly before we crossed the Nicholson; and on the plains and approaches to the rivers and creeks. The large water-holes were frequently surrounded with a dense turf of Fimbristylis (a small sedge), which our horses liked to feed upon. Some stiff grasses made their appearance when we approached the sea-coast, as well on the plains as in the forest. The well-known kangaroo grass (Anthisteria) forms still one of the principal components of the pasture. The scrubby country ... — Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... complacently watched them as they hurried by. As I ran from my prison-house I fixed my eye upon Venus, the morning star, as my guide, and traveled until daylight, when I reached the summit of the mountain, where I found a sedge-grass field of about twenty acres, in the middle of which I lay down on the frozen ground and remained until the sun had gone down and darkness was gathering. During the day the soldiers in search of me frequently passed within thirty steps, so close that I could ... — Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... more field-trials won than by any other dog in Alabama. And now he dozed and dreamed of them again, with many twitchings of feet, and cocked, quivering ears, and rigid tail, as if once more frozen to the covey in the tall sedge-grass of the old field, with the smell of frost-bitten Lespedeza, wet with dew, ... — The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... wind did roar more loud; And the sails did sigh like sedge: And the rain pour'd down from one black cloud The moon was at ... — Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... line of wattled pale Fenced the downland from the vale, Now the sedge was set with reeds Fitter for Arcadian meads, And where I was wont to find Only things of timid kind, Now the Genius of the pool Mocked me from his corner cool. Eyes he had with malice quick, Tufted hair and ears a-prick, ... — Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... genus of motacilla; and motacilla salicaria of his fauna suecica seems to come the nearest to it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers where there is covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly night and day during the breeding-time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a skylark, and has a strange hurrying manner in its song. My specimens correspond most minutely to the description of your fen salicaria shot near Revesby. Mr. Ray has given an excellent ... — The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... latter wounded in the breast, and, urging their flight towards the vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, among them Laudonniere himself. As they struggled through the salt-marsh, the rank sedge cut their naked limbs, and the tide rose to their waists. Presently they descried others, toiling like themselves through the matted vegetation, and recognized Challeux and his companions, also in quest of the vessels. The old man still, as he tells us, held fast to his chisel, which ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... mile, the current being very strong, from six to eight miles an hour, and quite far enough to observe the nature of the stream at its embouchure. We could see that it widened and spread out in a myriad of channels, rushing by isolated clumps of sedge and matete grass; and that it had the appearance of a swamp. We had ascended the central, or main channel. The western channel was about eight yards broad. We observed, after we had returned to the bay, that the easternmost channel was about six yards broad, and about ten feet ... — How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... lower end of Bogue Sound amid the sedge grass they hoped to make their next camp, when this question would be debated from every side, and the plan of ... — Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... Spinney," said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a slope at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the opposite slope; "the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end. And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and look at ... — Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes |