"Yew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... together in one grave in Willesden churchyard. There is a small yew-tree west of the church. Beneath that tree let us lie. In one grave, mind. Do ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... discipline, comparatively speaking, and uncouthly armed, they all but vanquished the Norman chivalry. Trace their deeds in France, which they twice subdued; and even follow them to Spain, where they twanged the yew and raised the battle-axe, and left behind them a name of glory at Inglis Mendi, a name that shall last till fire consumes the Cantabrian hills. And, oh, in modern times, trace the deeds of these gallant men all over the world, and especially in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... drew near the house a young man sketching or writing under a yew-tree looked up curiously. A few steps farther on a pretty girl, in a Leghorn hat, clipping roses into a basket, glanced at him with shy, startled eyes. In the hall, where he was left standing, a young officer in sky-blue ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... a terrace bordered by a thick yew hedge, and descending by steps to a lower terrace, he became aware of voices in a strange tone and key—not loud, but, as it were, intensified far beyond the note of ordinary talk. Ashe stood still; for he had recognized the voice of Lady Kitty. But before he had made up his mind what to do ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'is a good tree to sleep under, for nothing will grow there, and there is always dry beech-mast; the yew would be good if it did not grow so low, but, all in all, pine-trees are the best.' I also considered that the worst tree to sleep under would be the upas tree. These thoughts so nearly bordered on nothing that, though I was not sleepy, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... cross me—and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at; or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me; or basking in the orangery, till ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Palladius is very prudent (l.c. p. 11): "Everything that the studious Chinese authors could gather and say of the situation of Karakhorum is collected in two Chinese works, Lo fung low wen kao (1849), and Mungku yew mu ki (1859). However, no positive conclusion can be derived from these researches, chiefly in consequence of the absence of a tolerably ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... 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 ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the winter the wall is flowerless and the branches of the lime-trees are bare, and within, in the garden, there are only the holly-trees and the yew-hedge of the shrubbery walks, and the empty brown flower-beds set in the faded grass. But winter and summer alike, old Lady Kynaston holds her weekly receptions, and thither flock all the wit, and the talent, and the fashion of London. In the summer they are garden ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... which produced the Balm of Gilead has not been found in modern times, although the localities in which it anciently grew have been carefully explored.] It is, however, said that the yew tree, Taxus baccata, formerly very common in England, Germany, and—as we are authorized to infer from Theophrastus—in Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Then were they 'ware of two black monks, Each on a good palfrey. Then bespake Little JOHN, To MUCH he 'gan say: "I dare lay my life to wed These monks have brought our pay!" "Make glad cheer," said Little JOHN, "And frese our bows of yew! And look your hearts be sicker and sad, Your strings trusty and true!" The monk had fifty and two [men] And seven somers full strong, There rideth no Bishop in this land So royally I understand. "Brethren," said Little JOHN, "Here are ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... ale. "The good will of an Englishman would have displayed itself in a manner exactly the reverse of Andrew's," thought I, as I paced along the smooth-cut velvet walks, which, embowered with high, hedges of yew and of holly, intersected the ancient ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ontel he safe on de boat to-morrer. Tell him Jane Tanberry beg him to stay in he own room dis night, an' dat she beg it on her bented knees!' An' dis she say to me when I tole her what Nelson see in dat house dis evenin'. An' hyuh I is, an' hyuh yew is, an' de blessed Jesus be thank', you ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the Continent in ignorance. So I thought, 'Oh, what shall I do?' Just then Mr. Neville visited me, and I told him: on that he offered me his piebald horse to carry the news after Mr. Gaunt, because my gray was too tired: it was the day we drew Yew-tree Brow, and crossed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... waiting at the yew-tree stile, and I must go on. You did not expect to see me—here; I will appear, perhaps, as suddenly another time. It is great pleasure to us both—this opportunity to make our adieux. Farewell! my ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... which leaves Waterloo at 9.50, so I started early and caught the 9.13. At Farnham Station I had no difficulty in being directed to Charlington Heath. It was impossible to mistake the scene of the young lady's adventure, for the road runs between the open heath on one side and an old yew hedge upon the other, surrounding a park which is studded with magnificent trees. There was a main gateway of lichen-studded stone, each side pillar surmounted by mouldering heraldic emblems; but besides this central carriage drive I observed several points ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Portion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot: This branch may be his wife, A ruddy human life Now turned to a ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... notwithstanding his first resolve of braving his way, habit and consideration induced him to prefer the track least frequented or attended with risk. At the extremity of the wall, where it turned at a right angle to afford an opening for a gateway, grew an immense yew-tree, solitary and alone, like some dark and malignant giant, stretching out its arms to battle with centuries and storms; softened by no shadow, cheered by no sunbeam, enlivened by no shower, no herb or flower flourished beneath its ban, but there it towered, like the spirit of evil in a smiling ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of William the Conqueror. When the Normans invaded England they carried the long-bow with them, and as the Saxons had no weapon so powerful, they readily adopted it. The proper length of the long-bow, which was made of yew or ash, was the height of the archer who used it. The largest ones, however, were six feet long, and as the arrow was always half the length of the bow, the longest arrows measured three feet, which is just a cloth yard. They were therefore given the name of "cloth-yard shaft." The arrows were ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hum of the bees at the mouth of the hive, ten paces away, nor the noisy bustle of the drones. It was only when the swarm poured out upon the air with a whir of wings and, darkening for an instant the sunny doorway of the summer-house, sailed over the yew hedge towards the road, that Tristram leapt to his feet and ran at ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only remember The maid—the maid of the mill, And Polly, and one or two others In the churchyard over the hill. And I sadly ask the question, As I weep in the yew-tree's shade With my elbow on one of their tombstones, 'Ah, why did they all of them fade?' And the answer I half expected Comes from the solemn yew, 'They could none of them bide, for the world was wide, And the ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... followed him, and found himself in the bedroom, furnished with the same simplicity as the other; but with an iron bedstead in the corner, a kneeling stool beside it, with a little French silver image of St. Mary over it, and a sprig of dried yew tucked in behind. A thin leather-bound copy of the Little Office of Our Lady lay on the sloping desk, with another book or two on the upper slab. Dom Anthony went to the window and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... gain the powerful old fellow's good will. You must know that Solomon had no intention of remaining in office all his life. He looked forward to retiring by-and-by, and devoting his green old age to a life of pleasure on a certain yew-stump in the Figs which had taken his fancy, and for years he had been quietly filling his stocking. It was a stocking belonging to some bathing person which had been cast upon the island, and at the time I speak of it contained ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... this voice, Barnabas came to a lawn screened from the house by hedges of clipped yew. At the further end of this lawn was a small building which had been made to look as much as possible like the after-cabin of a ship. It had a door midway, with a row of small, square windows on either side, and was flanked ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... sepulchre three hundred years and more in wind and rain— are daubed in forcibly against the glowing ferns and heather. Every tassel of their rusty foliage is defined with pre-Raphaelite minuteness. And a sorry figure they make out there in the sun, like misbegotten yew-trees! The scene is all pitched in a key of colour so peculiar, and lit up with such a discharge of violent sunlight, as a man might live fifty years in England ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Stood beside the mast; From his yew-bow, tipped with silver, Flew the arrows fast; Aimed at Eric unavailing, As he sat concealed, Half behind the quarter-railing, Half behind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... where she had sat on her wedding-day. She went through the wicket where she and her mother had both passed as brides, and down the green slope that led near the quarry to the woods. The swallows had gone. She came to Reddin's black yew-tree at the fringe of the wood, and sat down there, where she could watch the front door. In spite of her bird-like quickness of ear, she was too much overwhelmed by the scene she had just left to notice ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... traces of the old Plantagenet times are to be met with everywhere, side by side with the manufacturing interests of the West Riding of to-day. There is the park of Kirklees, full of sunny glades, speckled with black shadows of immemorial yew-trees; the grey pile of building, formerly a "House of professed Ladies;" the mouldering stone in the depth of the wood, under which Robin Hood is said to lie; close outside the park, an old stone- gabled house, now a roadside inn, but which bears ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... round through the back part of the house into the pretty old-fashioned garden. There was a sunny border just under the windows, and clipped box and yew-trees by the grass-plat, further away from the house; and she prattled again of her childish adventures and solitary plays. When they turned round they saw the old man, who had hobbled out with the help of his stick, and was looking at them with the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... melt away—David and Canon Aylwin strolling off together—and soon Lucy found herself alone. She sat down in a seat round which curved a yew hedge, and whence there was a somewhat wide view over a bare, hilly country, with suggestions everywhere of factory life in the hollows, till on the southwest it rose and melted into the Derbyshire moors. Autumn—late autumn—was on all the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cramped legs by running about in the charming garden behind that celebrated inn. Dim bright memories are with me still of the long-windowed parlour opening into a garden verdant with grass, and stately yew hedges, and formal clipped trees; gay, too, with bright flowers, and mysterious with a walk winding under an arch of the yew hedge to the more distant bowling-green. On one side of this arch an admirably-carved stone figure in broadcoat and ruffles played perpetually upon a ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... years in the country and never see one of these birds. There is a trick in finding birds' nests, and a trick in seeing birds. The first I noticed was in an orchard; soon after, I found a second in a yew-tree (close to a window), and after that constantly came upon them as they crept through brambles or in hedgerows, or a mere speck up in a fir-tree. So soon as I had seen ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... with Count Ganelon rode on, Until together had they pledged their faith To snare Rolland and lead him to his death. Thus on they rode through vales and mountain-paths, Till Sarraguce was reached. Beneath a yew They lighted: a faldstool by shady pines O'erhung, was spread with Alexandrine silk. There sat the King who ruled all Spain, and stood Around him twenty thousand Saracens, Who neither spoke nor breathed, to hear the news; And lo! ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... of Lu-chow Fu in Ngan-hui. Ogdai died in 1241, and was nominally succeeded by his grandson Cheliemen. But one of his widows, Tolickona, took possession of the throne, and after exercising rule for four years, established her son Kwei-yew as great khan. In 1248 his life was cut short, and the nobles, disregarding the claims of Cheliemen, proclaimed as emperor Mangu, the eldest son of Tu-le. Under this monarch the war against Sung was carried on with energy, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... tough as fifty-year-old yew. Nothing couldn't kill him; but look, sir, look! See how they're getting ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the very windows, and dark Scotch firs shed a gloom all over the Park. Dangerfield is one of those places that seem always to be in the shade. How the strawberries ever ripen, or the flowers ever bloom, or the birds ever sing there is to me a mystery. Outside there are dark walls and yew hedges and cypresses, and here and there a copper beech, with lawns that are never mown and copses that are never thinned, to say nothing of that stagnant moat, with its sombre and prolific vegetation; whilst within, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... rectangular plots, bordered by straight alleys, sometimes paved with vari-colored sand, and edged with formal hedges of box and holly. The turf was inlaid with parterres cut in geometric shapes and set, at even distances, with yew trees clipped into cubes, cones, pyramids, spheres, sometimes into figures of giants, birds, animals, and ships—called "topiary work" (opus topiarium). Terraces, fountains, bowling-greens (Fr. boulingrin) statues, arcades, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... these the Queens exert their might; One the left side, and t'other guards the right: Where each, by her respective armour known. Chooses the colour that is like her own. 60 Then the young Archers, two that snowy-white Bend the tough yew, and two as black as night; (Greece call'd them Mars's favourites heretofore, From their delight in war, and thirst of gore). These on each side the Monarch and his Queen 65 Surround obedient; next to these are seen The crested Knights in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... is only about three miles long and two in breadth, with a circuit of nine miles in all. It rises out of the lake to an average height of three hundred feet, and is heavily wooded with cedar, beech, maple, and yew. Three of its sides are bold and rocky, the fourth slopes down gradually toward the north to meet the blue waters of the lake. The island is intersected in all directions with carriage-roads and paths, and ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... listen to save the sighing of the east wind through the fine needle-like leaflets of the yew-trees; and the mist was rapidly shutting out every sight but the awful, pathetic form above us. Evening had closed in, night was coming gradually, yet swiftly. Every minute was drawing the darkness more densely about us. If ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... peaceful stillness of a summer's day hung over an ancient wood which lay in the heart of the New Forest near the village of Lyndhurst. The wood was a part of a large demesne which had at one time been bordered by hedges of yew and holly, but these, having been untrimmed for years, had grown into great bushes which in many places were choked up by underwood ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... discriminated the rough stones of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a sable bush-holly or yew. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... layer, containing vegetable matter. But that layer tells a wonderful history. It is full of stumps of trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... climb the Coomb's ascent: sweet songsters near Warble in shade their wild-wood melody: Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear. Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock 5 That on green plots o'er precipices browze: From the deep fissures of the naked rock The Yew-tree bursts! Beneath its dark green boughs (Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white) Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats, 10 I rest:—and now have gain'd the topmost site. Ah! what a luxury of landscape meets My gaze! Proud towers, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... bower is wild and drear, And sad the dark yew's shade; The flowers which bloom in silence here, In silence ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Yew that is old in churchyard mould, He breedeth a mighty bow; Alder for shoes do wise men choose, And beech for cups also. But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled, And your shoes are clean outworn, ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My last night was in a deep cavern at the base of a ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Death, And in sad cypres let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it! My part of death no one so true ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... or for ornamental work—pine,cypress, yew, cedar, and oak,* musical instruments,** helmets, leathern jerkins covered with metal scales, weapons of bronze and iron,*** chariots,**** dyed and embroidered stuffs,^ perfumes,^^ dried cakes, oil, wines of Kharu, liqueurs ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the corners o' that's eyes an' that said: "I'll give you three guesses every night to guess my name, an' if you hain't guessed it afore the month's up, yew shall be mine." ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... name, eh? What's yer business, that's what Jeb Case'd like to know, eh?" He snapped his words out with the rapidity of a machine gun, nor waited for a reply to one query before launching the next. "What do ye want to buy, eh? How much money ye got? Looks suspicious. That's a sight o' money yew got ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sequestered living by the help of a Presbyterian Parish, which had got the true owner out. And this Scotch Presbyterian, being well settled in this good living, began to reform the Churchyard, by cutting down a large yew-tree, and some other trees that were an ornament to the place, and very often a shelter to the parishioners; who, excepting against him for so doing, were answered, "That the trees were his, and 'twas lawful for every ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... appels and the Plumbs As Big as my 2 thums; the hayprecocks an peechis, Wot all within our reech is, An we mought pick an heat, paying nothing for the treat. O for the pooty flouers A bloomin at all ours, So that a large Bokay Yew may gether any day Of ev'ry flour that blose from ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... pangs of grief or unrequited love—pent up in its own solitude, unpitied and uncared for—and filled with dark thoughts, and sad sounds, and tones of plaintive winds, sighing through the cypress and doleful yew with mournful melody around the resting-place of the loved and lost, to submissive lamentings, and slow stealing tears that assuage its aching anguish and tranquillize the spirit, leading it to the hope of a brighter future, in whose dawning beams it will, ere-long, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Bourton market they had turned into the churchyard on the top of Stow-hill. The long path went straight between the stiff yew cones through the green ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... ever returned he would plant a good deal there; adding, however, that he feared before that could take place both he and Lady Collingwood might themselves be planted in the churchyard beneath some old yew tree. ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... Dew tell!" she exclaims. "I thought yew were in Pa-ar—is! Ma, would yew have concluded to find Lord Algy here? This is too lovely! If I'd known yew were coming I'd have stopped at ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... forget How sunder human ties, When round the silent place of rest A gather'd kindred lies. We stand beneath the haunted yew, And watch each quiet tomb, And in the ancient churchyard feel Solemnity, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... about it, and she glanced round to see if Mr Roy noticed where she was standing. No. His earnest face and pursed-up mouth looked more engrossed than ever. Neither of the speakers could see her, for between her and them there was a small piece of thick yew hedge. So, secure in her wrong-doing, Biddy lent an attentive ear and forgot her duty, the baby, and everything else. She could hear ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... 2. Its utilization is of doubtful practibility, on account of its distance from navigable water, and the obstructions of the streams flowing therein. There is an occasional alder bottom, hemlock is quite common, bull pine is found in a few localities, and yew, dog-wood and crab-apple occur upon all the islands. There is a dense undergrowth of salal, whortle, salmon, raspberry and ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... Hall after you left. Sir William was seized with a kind of fit. It appears that he had just returned from the horse show, and had given his mare to the groom while he walked to the garden entrance. The groom saw him turn at the yew hedge, and was driving to the stables when he heard a queer kind of cry, and turning back to the garden front, found poor Sir William lying on the ground in convulsions. The doctor was sent for, and Mr. Brunton and I went over to the Hall. The doctor thinks it was something like a stroke, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... but that of the room above was shuttered. There was a hole in the shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and a thin shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried itself in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden. From the loudness of the sounds I judged this to be the room where the flute-playing was going on. The crackling of my footsteps on the thin soil did not disturb the performer, so I gathered a handful of earth and pitched it up against ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... highly delighted with their good hap. It seemed as though Fortune followed at their heels, or rather ran ahead of them, to arrange surprises. After a delicious tete-a-tete dinner behind one of the clipped yew trees in the quaint garden, they took a carriage and drove off ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... arrived, and that was the sign. Miss Muffet, whose profile, having the breeze and the surprise of the sun in her hair, was dedicated with a quivering and aureate nimbus, pulled aside the brush of a small yew, and exclaimed; for there, neatly set in the angle of the bough, was a brown cup with three blue eggs in it. I saw all this, and tried my best to get back to it; but I was not there. I saw it clearly—the late shower glittered on my coat and on the yew with ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... but I shall never make a proper bowman of you! Were ever such shafts fashioned to fit across cord and yew!" ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... here staying Amid these stale things Who care not for gaying, And those junketings That used so to joy her, And never to cloy her As us they cloy! . . . But She is shut, she is shut From the cheer of them, dead To all done and said In a yew-arched bed. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... many twists under overarching branches ran down a steep hill and came out into the open by the big house with its pillared portico and its light grey stone and its wonderful garden of lawn and flowers and cedars. A tiny church with a narrow graveyard and strange carefully-trimmed square bushes of yew stood next to the house, and beyond the church the lane dipped to the river and ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... broad by-way; after going down which for about a mile, you come to a straggling little village called Yatton, at the farther extremity of which stands a little aged gray church, with a tall thin spire; an immense yew-tree, with a kind of friendly gloom, overshadowing, in the little churchyard, nearly half the graves. Rather in the rear of the church is the vicarage-house, snug and sheltered by a line of fir-trees. After walking on about eighty yards, you come to high park-gates, and see a ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... yew tree, is a forerunner of illness and disappointment. If a young woman sits under one, she will have many fears to rend her over her fortune and the faithfulness of her lover. If she sees her lover standing by one, she may expect to hear of his illness, or misfortune. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... far-projecting thatch of a farmhouse. The gardens are full of sun-flowers and hollyhocks, fuchsia and golden rod; the walls are covered with jasmine and passion-flowers. Old, old churches make us feel like day-flies. The yew in the churchyard five minutes' walk from here is said to be 900 years old; the church itself is thirteenth century, but into its walls were built fragments of a former church, far older, on the same site. It carries us more than half-way back to the foundation of Christianity. Dim tales of heathen ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... book, that the stone of Dryburgh was taken from the quarry that built Melrose, and that the name Dryburgh meant "Druid." Even the boys, I think, could hardly help feeling the mysterious, haunting charm of the place, which was as strange and secret as if the dark yew trees and Lebanon cedars guarding the ruins were enchanted Druid priests. There was a Druid urn, too, which looked as if it knew all the secrets of the ages, and had held ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Witch. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf; Witches' mummy; maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark; Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark; Liver of blaspheming Jew; Gall of goat; and slips of yew, Silver'd in the moon's eclipse; Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips; Finger of birth-strangled babe, Ditch delivered by a drab,— Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... and little windows below the cranes,—all perfectly useless, but also perfectly picturesque and perfectly Dutch. The rooms were large and airy, and the garden sloped down to the river-side. It had paths bordered by clipped box, and shaded by holly and yew trees ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... in 1860, foxes were seen about the house and moving towards the house for some days previously. Just before his death three foxes were playing about and making a noise close to the house, and just in front of the "cloisters," which are yew-trees planted and trained in that shape. The Hon. Mrs. Farrell states as regards the same that the foxes came in pairs into the demesne, and sat under the Viscount's bedroom window, and barked and howled all night. Next morning they were to be found crouching about in the grass in front and ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... a shade o'ercast 10 Brave Hoel's ruddy hue, But soon the moment's thought is past:— Hark, hark, 'tis the trumpet's stirring blast! And he grasped his bow of yew. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... As the light beat across my face my fore-wheels took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang horsemen ten feet high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and sleek round-headed maids of honour—blue, black, and glistening—all of clipped yew. Across the lawn—the marshalled woods besieged it on three sides—stood an ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with mullioned windows and roofs of rose-red tile. It was flanked by semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth side, and ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... yew so strong, (p. 420) Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpent stung, Piercing the weather. None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And, like true ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... to walls, the water-lily to lecherous monks, the birchen rod to the scholars of the college of Navarre in Paris, colewort to the vine-tree, garlic to the loadstone, onions to the sight, fern-seed to women with child, willow-grain to vicious nuns, the yew-tree shade to those that sleep under it, wolfsbane to wolves and libbards, the smell of fig-tree to mad bulls, hemlock to goslings, purslane to the teeth, or oil to trees. For we have seen many of those rogues, by virtue and right application of this herb, finish their lives short ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... timeless grave to throw, No cypress, sombre on the snow; Snap not from the bitter yew His leaves that live December through; Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him: bring No spray that ever buds ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image of an enemy transfixed by bodkins for the torment of that enemy; the belief in the were-wolf (one of the oldest of Roman traditions); the association of the yew tree with mourning and the passing ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... and ordering cutting all round her ruthlessly with something of the pleasure of a child in breaking a new toy to prove that it is his own, scarcely listening when the Admiral told her what the trees were, and how beautiful in their season; while even as to the evergreens, she did not know a yew from a cedar, and declared that she must get rid of this horrid old laurustinus, while she lopped away at a Portugal laurel. Her one idea seemed to be that it was very unwholesome to live in a house surrounded with trees; and the united influence of the Merrifields, working on ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twins, who, with the light-hearted gayety of schoolboys, were evidently amusing themselves before they retired to rest, but at a quarter-past eleven all was still, and, as midnight sounded, he sallied forth. The owl beat against the window-panes, the raven croaked from the old yew-tree, and the wind wandered moaning round the house like a lost soul; but the Otis family slept unconscious of their doom, and high above the rain and storm he could hear the steady snoring of the Minister for the United ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... old in Rosamond's Bower, With it's peacock hedges of yew, One could never find the flower Unless one was given the clue; So take the key of the wicket, Who would follow my fancy free, By formal knot and clipt thicket, And smooth greensward ...
— A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden • Walter Crane
... no reply, but reflected that, no matter how cruel the Witch might be, she had only one life to lose, and in her present plight what terror could death hold for her? She did not attempt to look for flies, therefore, but sat down beneath a yew tree, and gave way to tears and lamentations. 'Alas, dear husband,' she cried, 'how grieved you will be when you go to fetch me from the castle, and find me gone! You will suppose me to be dead or faithless; how ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... commemorates the entry of our Lord into Jerusalem when the people strewed {205} the way with palm branches and cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David." It was formerly customary for worshippers to appear on this day in procession carrying in their hands palms, or yew or willow branches, which were blessed before the beginning of the Communion Service. On Palm Sunday the Church has always begun to set before God and man the Gospel account of the Passion of our Lord, that by St. Matthew ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous Yew Alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the 4th of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... daughter, snatched from their friends by some sudden and terrible casuality—were strewn fresh and beauteous flowers, the fragrant offering of a gentle girl, who daily sought that sacred spot to weep over the loved and lost. Near this, beneath a shady yew, was the lowly bed of the poor man's daughter, whose remains had ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... venerable yew, Which in the village churchyard grew, Two ravens sat. With solemn croak Thus to his mate a ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... and Mordaunt stood by an open window in Mrs. Halliday's drawing-room at Whitelees. A smell of stocks came in, and across the lawn, rows of dahlias, phlox, and autumn lilies made a belt of glowing color against a dark yew hedge. The hedge was neatly clipped and the turf was very smooth. By and by Mordaunt turned and glanced about the room, which he knew well. Whitelees was modern, and although Mrs. Halliday sometimes grumbled about her poverty, its furniture and decoration ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... yer dewin'! Ye dern smart aleck! Haint yew got no sense! You'll stick the pint of thet thing in my boawels, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... weapons, beginning with such as were of simple character; he was taught to ride, not only in the saddle, but to sit a horse bare-backed, or under any conceivable circumstances which might occur. He had to bend the stout yew bow and to wield the sword, he had to couch the lance, which art he acquired with dexterity by the practice at ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... against a cluster of ancient firs, in the midst of its quiet graves, yew shaded here and there. Beside it stood the manse, within its sweet old garden, protected by ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros. Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked; Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice: And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not herself again. - I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the Yew, Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade; Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape, (The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilahshears of Decorum;) And I said, "Surely nature is goodly; ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... half-heroic men carrying off half-distressful females—he would spend an hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose. The day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual. It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and plums. When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi—"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Garland on my Hearse of the dismal yew; Maidens, Willow branches bear; say I died true: My Love was false, but I was firm from my hour of birth; Upon my buried ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... through a cleft between two high mountains about twenty shepherds coming down, all clad in jerkins of black wool, and crowned with garlands, some of which were of yew, and some of cypress. Six of them carried a bier covered with various flowers and boughs. One of the goatherds said: "Those who come hither are bearing the corpse of Chrysostom, and at the foot of yonder mountain is the place where he desired to be interred." Four of them, with sharp ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... says, made an epoch in English book illustration, importing a new element to which he finds it difficult to give a name. "I still adore," he says, "the lovely, wild, irresponsible moon-face of Oriana, with a gigantic mailed archer kneeling at her feet in the yew-wood, and stringing his fatal bow; the strange beautiful figure of the Lady of Shalott, when the curse comes over her, and her splendid hair is floating wide, like the magic web; the warm embrace of Amy and her cousin (when their spirits rushed together ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... the first of September, in which time we had two very great stormes. [Sidenote: Faire woods.] I landed, and went sixe miles by ghesse into the countrey, and found that the woods were firre, pineaple, alder, yew, withy, and birch: here we saw a blacke beare: this place yeeldeth great store of birds, as fezant, partridge, Barbary hennes or the like, wilde geese, ducks, black birdes, ieyes, thrushes, with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... vessel was about to sail from Yarmouth to Cadiz. She was named the 'Adventuress,' of one hundred tons burden, and carried wool and other goods outwards, purposing to return with a cargo of wine and yew staves for bows. In this vessel my father bought me a passage. Moreover, he gave me fifty pounds in gold, which was as much as I would risk upon my person, and obtained letters from the Yarmouth firm of merchants to their agents in Cadiz, in which they were advised to advance me ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... at the smithy, whose red cheeks but a month ago he had been so eager to see. Poor Nancy! her cheeks had shared the fate of roses, and were withered now. She had taken the illness on the same day with Esmond—she and her brother were both dead of the small-pox, and buried under the Castlewood yew-trees. There was no bright face looking now from the garden, or to cheer the old smith at his lonely fireside. Esmond would have liked to have kissed her in her shroud (like the lass in Mr. Prior's pretty poem), but she rested many foot ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the rock, or a lodgment of earth appears, the yew-tree, indigenous in such situations, contrasts its deep and glossy green with the pale grey of the limestone; but the goat, the old adventurous inhabitant of situations, inaccessible to every other quadruped, has been lately banished from the sides of Gordale. But the wonders of this place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... doubt, From what kind of tree this Wood was hewn out, Teague made a good pun by a brogue in his speech: And said, "By my shoul, he's the son of a BEECH." Some call him a thorn, the curse of the nation, As thorns were design'd to be from the creation. Some think him cut out from the poisonous yew, Beneath whose ill shade no plant ever grew. Some say he's a birch, a thought very odd; For none but a dunce would come under his rod. But I'll tell the secret; and pray do not blab: He is an old stump, cut out of a crab; And England has put this ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... odd," she said as they followed the path through the wintry wood, startled now and again by a rabbit at the end of the alley, by a cock pheasant rising up suddenly out of the yew hedges, and, beguiled by the beauty of the trees, they passed on slowly, pausing to think what a splendid sight a certain wild cherry must be in the spring-time. At the end of the wood Owen returned to ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... their seats. Nothing that was done there seemed to be any trouble or burdensome. But at the first course there came a surprise in the form of a knight outside the door. As he sat on his charger, all armed from head to feet, he looked prouder than a bull, and a bull is a yew proud beast. One leg was fixed in the stirrup, but the other he had thrown over the mane of his horse's neck, to give himself a careless and jaunty air. Behold him advancing thus, though no one noticed ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... look so spectral, and the shade from the yew-trees lies so still on the sward. When the brows of Roland are gloomiest, and the compression of his lips makes sorrow look sternest, be sure that Blanche is couched at his feet, waiting the moment when, with some heavy sigh, the muscles relax, and she ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sub-alpine. It is common on Hattu, and the oaks there present a forlorn appearance after rain with funereal mosses dripping with moisture hanging from their trunks. The firs, Picea morinda, with its grey tassels, and Abies Pindrow with its dark green yew-like foliage, succeed the blue pine. Picea may be said to range from 8000 to 10,000 feet, and the upper limit of Abies is from 1000 to 2000 feet higher. These splendid trees are unfortunately of small commercial value. The yew, Taxus baccata, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... popularity of archery in our midst until the subject of a club was broached. Then we all perceived what a strong interest we felt in the study and use of the bow and arrow. The club was formed immediately, and our thirty members began to discuss the relative merits of lancewood, yew, and greenheart bows, and to survey yards and lawns for suitable spots for setting up targets for ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... shoulders. In one hand he bore a broken leash of red bronze, and in the other two hunting spears with blades of flashing findruiney and the hafts were long, slender, and shining. By his thigh hung a short sword in a sheath of red yew and beside it the polished and nigh transparent horn of the Urus, suspended in a baldrick of knitted thread of bronze. The grass stood erect from the pressure of his light feet. His manly face had not yet known the razor; only the first soft down of budding manhood was seen there. His countenance ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... of days, not hours, Of patches, powder, belle and beau, Of sun-dials, secrets, yew-tree bowers, And the romance ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... shaggy limb, 185 Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet formed with care, A cubit's length in measure due; The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, 190 Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave, And, answering Lomond's breezes deep, Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep. The Cross, thus formed, he held on high, 195 With wasted hand and haggard eye, And ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... threats, or more likely, the fact that all the Close was on the alert, Peregrine's exploits were less frequent there, and began to extend to the outskirts of the city. There were some fine yew trees on the southern borders, towards the chalk down, with massive dark foliage upon stout ruddy branches, among which Peregrine, armed with a fishing-rod, line, and hook, sat perched, angling for what ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, coolly. "Didn't know yew was coming aboard. Can yew trade me a barrel or two o' good whites flour? I'm running ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... of the gate pillars sat two stone lions, which were so hideous that I was afraid of them. Perhaps this sentiment was prophetic. One could see the house by peeping through the bars of the gates. It was a gloomy-looking place, with a tall yew hedge round it; but in the summer-time some flowers grew about the sun-dial in the grass plat. This house was called the Hall, and Squire Carson lived there. One Christmas—it must have been the Christmas before my father emigrated, or I should ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... patron saint St. Wenceslaus, to whom he built a beautiful chapel in his palace. There are gardens and fountains, a Sala terrena, said to be the largest in Europe; there are magnolia-trees as old as the palace; there is a bower of black old yew-trees screening the space where this warrior-statesman received the ambassadors of kings who sought alliance with him. There is an uncanny air of desolation over all this vast demesne, an air of unsatisfied ambition, of vain striving and infinite sadness of remorse. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... to be married." (This was true. Ah, what a comfort to speak the truth to him!) "Doesn't it occur to you that, at this very moment, a couple of lovers may be sitting hand in hand on the seat under the old yew arbour? Can't you imagine how they started and tried to hold their breath lest you should hear, as you opened the gate and came up ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... regarding pulpit deportment and the delivery of their sermons. One unfortunate was so nervous and clinging that John arranged his remarks for him into heads—with an application to two classes—and then, having suggested many points, stopped under the yew arch that divided the kirkyard from the manse garden, and turned on the shaking ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... mighty sore fer ee, so us be!" said old Benjamin Blake, who had helped to bring her home. "But teddin fer yew nor I, Jacob, tu go fornenst His will." And he went out crying ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... with hand in hand, the Sisters Troil appear; Poor "Mina's" cheek was deadly pale, in "Brenda's" eye a tear; And "Norna," in a sable vest, sang wild a funeral cry, And waved aloft a bough of yew, in solemn mystery. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... dense walls of box and yew showing dark against a saffron sky, the half-defaced knightly figure above the great portico, the tiled floor of the hall, where a few ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... some evergreens and flowers to put upon her coffin—indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them. Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and boy's-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum. And let old Pleasant draw her, because she knew him ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the table, looking up into Mr. St. John's face without the least apparent fear. Boys sometimes call the little blue-tit Billy Biter, no doubt from personal experience of the sharpness of Mr. Tit's beak. The great tit which we can see under the yew tree in our garden, almost any hour of the day, is very common in the neighbourhood, and I dare say if we look well about us during our walk we shall see ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... youth that makes thee so little observant," said the hermit. "However, I pardon thee, if it were only for that good thought which moved thee to plant a yew beyond the rosemary bush; seeing that the yew is the emblem of eternal life, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... high-road. The church was big enough to hold the whole population, were people minded to go to church, and indeed a large proportion did go, and all who married were married in it, and everybody, to begin with, was christened at its font and buried at last in its yew-shaded graveyard. Everybody knew everybody in the place. It was, in fact, a definite place and a real human community in those days. There was a pleasant old market-house in the middle of the town with ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... His successor, Yew, "the Dark," appears to even less advantage. No redeeming acts relieve the general disorder of his reign, and at the instigation of a favorite concubine he is said to have committed acts which place him on a level with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... exact—Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry's request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... been mean enough to pause and listen outside the sheltering yew-hedge near which they sat, might have questioned the poetry of their love-making, and have condemned an avowal of devotion punctuated by barbarous slang; but the silence that fell between them was full of tenderness and more easily understood than speech, and perhaps ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Every yard almost salutes you with some similar absurdity. The hedges are shaped into peacocks, and not unfrequently into ladies and gentlemen dancing a minuet. Pillars of cypress, and pyramids of yew, terminate almost every walk, and if there is an hollow in the garden, it is formed into a muddy pond, in which half a dozen nymphs in stone, are about to plunge. The ill-taste of these statues is not the worst; they are grossly indecent: nothing is reserved, nothing is concealed; and yet the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... just beginning, for next evening, while she was waiting in her room until it was safe to carry food to the fugitives, a small stone came sharply against the window, and, looking out, she saw a dark figure standing in the shadow of the great yew-tree. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a' wide scatter'd now, Some to the Indies gane, And ane, alas! to her lang hame; Not here we 'll meet again. The kirkyaird, the kirkyaird, Wi' flowers o' every hue, Shelter'd by the holly's shade, An' the dark sombre yew. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of Stoke Revel owned a yew tree, so very, very old that the count of its years was lost and had become a fable or a fairy tale. It was twisted, gnarled, and low; and its long branches, which would have reached the ground, were upheld, like the arms of some dying patriarch, by supports, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to be an odd crew! There's the old sea-captain that lives in that queer house with the single yew tree and the boarded-up window on the edge of the Heath. He's one of them. He used to come to church about once a quarter and wrote the Rector interminable letters on the meaning of Ezekiel. Then there's the publican—East—who nearly lost his license last year—he always put it down ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she was behaving so badly, moved me much towards her; especially as I longed to know what she had to tell me. Therefore I allowed her to coax me, and to kiss me, and to lead me away a little, as far as the old yew-tree; for she would not tell ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... jaw of the selected one, and, fastening it to a cord, dragged him along over rocks and stones, till she reached a cave, overhung by a projecting ridge. A gloomy fissure in the ground was there, of a depth almost reaching to the Infernal Gods, where the yew-tree spread thick its horizontal branches, at all times excluding the light of the sun. Fearful and withering shade was there, and noisome slime cherished by the livelong night. The air was heavy and flagging as that of the Taenarian promontory; and hither the God of hell permits his ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... bow used in archery is made of lancewood or yew and for men's use is usually 6 feet long and for women and children 6 inches shorter. The strength or pull necessary to bend the bow, given in pounds, determines its classification. The arrows for men's use should be 28 inches long and for women ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... for the cedar the estimate is 25 billion feet, while the same amount of 25 billion feet is credited to hemlock; 12 billion feet of spruce are claimed, 12 billion feet of yellow pine and probably 6 billion feet of other woods, including maple, alder, oak, yew, ash and many others, together forming the great mass of 200 billion feet of lumber. Where forest areas are cut off, the [Page 10] sun and air at once start to life seeds which lie dormant in the shade and a new crop at once starts ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... some distance from Mansfield, when his horse being found to have flung a shoe, Henry Crawford had been obliged to give up, and make the best of his way back. "I told you I lost my way after passing that old farmhouse with the yew-trees, because I can never bear to ask; but I have not told you that, with my usual luck—for I never do wrong without gaining by it—I found myself in due time in the very place which I had a curiosity to see. I was suddenly, upon turning the corner of a steepish downy field, in the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... had many matters of detail into which to inquire; so I returned alone to our modest quarters at the village inn. But before doing so I took a stroll in the curious old-world garden which flanked the house. Rows of very ancient yew trees cut into strange designs girded it round. Inside was a beautiful stretch of lawn with an old sundial in the middle, the whole effect so soothing and restful that it was welcome to my ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lawn, a high plastered wall—masked by hollies, bay, yew, and at the far end by masses of airy, pink-plumed tamarisk—shut off the eastward view. But straight before him all lay open, "clean away to the curve of the world" as he told himself, not without a pull ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... pleached alleys, under a dome of branches, is a little lake, with a Triton of black marble, and with water-lilies. Hither and thither under the archipelago of water-lilies, dart gold-fish—tongues of flame in the dark water. There is also a long strait alley of clipped yew. It ends in an alcove for a pagoda of painted porcelain which the Prince Regent—peace be to his ashes!—presented to my great-grandfather. There are many twisting paths, and sudden aspects, and devious, fantastic arbours. Are you fond of horses? In my stables of pine-wood ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... to bows and arrows," said Walter. "We must look out for the proper sort of trees to make the bows. Perhaps we may find some wood similar to the yew-tree of old England." ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... clowns. I am not over prudent to trust to his pilotage; but wiser men have been led by fools. By this time he reached the bottom of the alley, where, turning short on a little parterre of flowers, shrouded from the east and north by a close yew hedge, he found an old man at work without his coat, whose appearance hovered between that of an upper servant and gardener; his red nose and ruffled shirt belonging to the former profession; his hale and sunburnt visage, with his green apron, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... happened one day to pass along the lane I have described as skirting the garden of the manor-house, on my way homewards to my farm; and on plunging my eyes, as usual, into the verdant depths of the clipped yew-walks, visible through the iron-palisades, was struck by the contrast afforded to the scene I had just witnessed, not only by its aristocratic tranquillity, but by the grave and subdued deportment of Lady Robert Stanley, who was sauntering in one of the alleys, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... and confused cries, As any mortall body hearing it, Should straite fall mad, or else die suddenly. No sooner had they told this hellish tale, But strait they told me they would binde me heere, Vnto the body of a dismall yew, And leaue me to this miserable death. And then they call'd me foule Adulteresse, Lasciuious Goth, and all the bitterest tearmes That euer eare did heare to such effect. And had you not by wondrous fortune come, This vengeance on me had they executed: Reuenge it, as you loue your Mothers life, Or ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... sound and turn indignantly to accuse, me of disturbing the peace. Then as the front door closed softly behind us, I stood blinking nervously in the dim green light which entered through the row of columns at the rear, beyond which I saw the curving stairway and the two miniature yew trees at its foot. There was a strange musty smell about the house—a smell that brings to me now, when I find it in old and unlighted buildings, the memory of the high ceiling, the shining floor over which I moved so cautiously, and the long melancholy rows ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... yew so strong, Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents stung, Piercing the weather; None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And like true English hearts ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... and Enoch's ocean spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare was ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... woodbine fresh She made her garlanding, And every night the dark glen yew She wore; and she would sing, And with her fingers old and brown She plaited mats of rushes, And gave them to the cottagers She met among ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... said old Tummus, carefully removing the scythe, and placing it in safety by hooking the blade high up in a dense yew-tree. "No well here, but I thought it best any way to ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn |
