"Copse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blessed spirit. And Nest was no longer young—neither was she old—"they reckon not by days, nor years where she was gone to dwell;" and her mother stretched out her arms to her with a calm, glad look of welcome. She awoke; the woodlark was singing in the near copse—the little birds were astir, and rustling in their leafy nests. Nest arose, and called Mary. The two set out through the quiet lane. They went along slowly and silently. With many a pause they crossed the broad ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of the sisters' devotion to one another (when Cassandra went to school little Jane accompanied her, the sisters could not be parted), of the family party, of the old place, 'where there are hedgerows winding, with green shady footpaths within the copse; where the earliest primroses and hyacinths are found.' There is the wood-walk, with its rustic seats, leading to the meadows; the church-walk leading to the church, 'which is far from the hum of the village, and within sight of no habitation, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... prentices were pugnacious, but as every one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he could not have his revenge. And when the slough was passed, and the slight rise leading to the copse of St. John's Wood was attained, behold, it was found to be in possession of the lower sort of lads, the black guard as they were called. They were of course quite as ready to fight with the prentices as the prentices were with them, and a battle royal took ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... came to a wood—the first real wood that I had ever seen; not a mere party of stately park trees growing out of smooth turf, but a real wild copse; tangled branches and grey stems fallen across each other; deep, ragged underwood of shrubs, and great ferns like princes' feathers, and gay beds of flowers, blue and pink and yellow, with butterflies flitting about them, and trailers that ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... clearing through the tunal. It lay beneath the stars, a narrow defile much overgrown, walled on either side by impenetrable wood. On went Sedley and his men, cautiously, silently, until they had wellnigh pierced the tunal, that was scarce wider, indeed, than an English copse. Before them, quiet as the tomb, rose the fortress—no sound save their stealthy movement and the stir of the life that was native to the woods, no sign of sentience other than their own. Back they went to the plateau and made report, then with Baldry and half of ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... later Cushnan Di was leading them through a copse of pawpaw trees to a secluded garden by the Aqueduct, overgrown with vines and ancient rose trees, and cherry shrubs. After an hour's labour with spades, while pickets guarded all approach, an opening was disclosed beneath the great flag-stones of a ruined building. Here was a wide natural corridor ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beauty of Steventon consisted in its hedgerows. A hedgerow, in that country, does not mean a thin formal line of quickset, but an irregular border of copse-wood and timber, often wide enough to contain within it a winding footpath, or a rough cart track. Under its shelter the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found; sometimes, the first bird's-nest; ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... improvident, wandered unprotected to a distance from her guardian doors—through lonely glens, and wood-walks, where she had rambled many a day in safety—till she arrived at a shady copse, out of the hearing of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... came.[19] Our pious sires upon the brass the sacred ship impress'd, Whose keel to blest Ausonian shores had borne the Olympian guest. Then on that spot I made my home where Tiber's waters glide, And eat the yielding banks away with sandy-rolling tide. Here, where Rome stands, wild copse green grew; the busy forum now Was then a peaceful glen, disturb'd by wandering oxen's low. My fortress then was that same hill which pious Rome reveres Even now, and thinks on Janus when Janiculum she hears. Here I was king, when holy earth of heavenly guests could tell, And in the haunts of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... when we have struggled in imagination through the last bit of copse, and tumbled over the palings into the lawn, we shall see a scene quite as lovely, if you will believe it, as any alp ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... like a mist between them, all being mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanescent cows are standing in the shallow water in front; a boat floats motionless about a hundred yards from the shore; the foreground is of broken rocks, with some lovely pieces of copse on ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the action was not so violent. Some of the light infantry had thrown themselves into houses; where, being attacked, they defended themselves with great courage and resolution. Colonel Howe having taken post with two companies behind a small copse, sallied out frequently on the flanks of the enemy during this attack, and often drove them into heaps; while brigadier Townshend advanced platoons against their front; so that the right wing of the French were totally prevented from executing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... ploughed rise near the road as I had seen it times innumerable touch the distant horizon of the sea. The uniform brownness of the harrowed field glowed with a rosy tinge, as though the powdered clods had sweated out in minute pearls of blood the toil of uncounted ploughmen. From the edge of a copse a waggon with two horses was rolling gently along the ridge. Raised above our heads upon the sky-line, it loomed up against the red sun, triumphantly big, enormous, like a chariot of giants drawn by two slow-stepping steeds of legendary proportions. ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... come off in the County Roscommon, about a mile and a half from Carrick, at the edge of a small copse, about a mile on the left-hand side of the Boyle road. A message had been conveyed to Doctor Blake to be near the spot with the different instruments that had been so freely named on the previous evening. At ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... A little copse appeared ahead, not of the gigantic forest trees, but of lesser growths, bearing flowers and fruits of iridescent colors, and a tiny brook bubbled through. And there stood the objective of their journey—a building of white, marble-like stone, single-storied and ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... up, proposed to take shelter in the barn, but the driver pointed to the flames already bursting from that building. He had barely time to leave the house, covered only by his night shirt, and, by the counsel of the negro, to fly to the cover of a thick copse of briars and brambles, within fifty yards of the dwelling, when the Tories surrounded it. The very task of penetrating this copse, so as to screen himself from sight, effectually removed the thin garment which concealed his nakedness. The ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... reaching the hill, just outside of the old rebel works, we naturally paused to look back upon the scenes of our past battles. We stood upon the very ground whereon was fought the bloody battle of July 22d, and could see the copse of wood where McPherson fell. Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. Away off in the distance, on the McDonough road, was the rear of Howard's column, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... had escaped from the calf. The copse or wood into which she had entered was dark and cool. A pathway went curving in and out among the trees. At a sharp turn she came suddenly upon a big man with a beard, who pointed a gun full at her, and said, "Stand, ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... escaped being turned into a drama, for one of the ladies of the court had a leg broken, and the minister, Fould, was almost mortally injured. A "dix cors," a stag with antlers of ten branches, had been run down at the Rond Royal where it had taken refuge in a near-by copse, and after an hour's hard chase was finally cornered in the courtyard of some farm buildings of the Hameau d'Orillets. A troop of cows was entering the courtyard at the same moment, and a most confused melee ensued. The Inspector of Forests saved the situation and the cows of the farmer, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Brunet and Souris, the two ponies, would flounder, almost imbedded, through the yielding mass. Even the vainglorious Plante, who piqued himself on his equestrian skill, was once or twice nearly unhorsed, from having chosen his road badly. Sometimes the elevations were covered with a thicket or copse, in which our dogs would generally rouse up one or more deer. Their first bound, or "lope," was the signal for a chase. The horses seemed to enter into the spirit of it, as "halloo" answered "halloo;" but we were never so fortunate as to get a shot at one, for although ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... glared on Roslin's castled rock, It ruddied all the copse-wood glen; 'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak, And seen ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... bothered me, that the earnest faces of my audience—who would NOT notice it, but were clearly preparing terrible anti-Socialist posers for me—began to fade away and my dream grew thin, and I awoke (as I thought) to find myself lying on a strip of wayside waste by an oak copse just ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... of copse,[FN64] with salams I greet; * O brother of lovers who woe must weet! I love a gazelle who is slender-slim, * Whose glances for keenness the scymitar beat: For her love are my heart and my vitals a-fire, * And my frame consumes in love's fever-heat. The sweet taste of food is unlawful for me, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... easily creep, and, when once in, stand erect without inconvenience. Beneath the bank the river was deep and still, forming a pool, where the largest and fattest fish were to be met with. In addition to this, the spot was extremely secluded, being rarely visited by the angler on account of the thick copse by which it was surrounded and which extended along the back, from the point of confluence between the lesser and the larger stream, to Downham mill, nearly half a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... delicious season of the year when Nature, breaking from the chilling thraldom of old winter, like a blooming damsel from the tyranny of a sordid old father, threw herself, blushing with ten thousand charms, into the arms of youthful Spring. Every tufted copse and blooming grove resounded with the notes of hymeneal love. The very insects, as they sipped the dew that gemmed the tender grass of the meadows, joined in the joyous epithalamium—the virgin bud timidly put forth its blushes, "the voice of the turtle was heard in the land," and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... at their own deserts: Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each, 130 And naming those, his friends, for whom they were: Then crost the common into Darnley chase To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech, 135 He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said: "That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire." And there he told a long long-winded tale Of how the Squire had seen the ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... hours brought them reinforcement. And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into position until, before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle. And through the charred and desolated area—perhaps twenty square miles altogether—that encircled the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... veery had flown with his heart-break to some distant copse, two song-sparrows came to persuade us with their blithe melody that life was worth living, after all; and cheerful little domestic birds, like the jenny-wren and the chipping-sparrow, pecked about and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... darted into a copse of young balsams where Baree had disappeared. Like a great entangling web her loose hair impeded her in the brush, and with an encouraging cry to Pierrot she stopped to gather it over her shoulder as he ran past her. She lost only a moment or two, ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... beneath Ben Aille's crest The west wind weaves its roof of gray, And all the glory of the day Blooms off from loch and copse and green hill-breast; So, when that craven council spoke retreat, The fateful shameful word They heard,—and scarcely heard! At Scotland's name how should the blood refuse ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... While backward from the hunter's eyes The landscape like a torrent flies. At last an ancient wood they gain'd, By pruner's axe yet unprofaned. High o'er the rest, by nature rear'd, The oak's majestic boughs appear'd; Beneath, a copse of various hue In barbarous luxuriance grew. 90 No knife had curb'd the rambling sprays, No hand had wove the implicit maze. The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind, The hazel's stubborn stem entwined, And bramble twigs were wreathed around, And rough furze crept along the ground. Here ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... upon his forehead stood, But gave his Maker little thanks For what he call'd his spindle shanks. 'What limbs are these for such a head!— So mean and slim!' with grief he said. 'My glorious heads o'ertops The branches of the copse; My legs are my disgrace.' As thus he talk'd, a bloodhound gave him chase. To save his life he flew Where forests thickest grew. His horns,—pernicious ornament!— Arresting him where'er he went, Did unavailing ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the thickly-grown copse, he had lain hidden from sight, baffling the keenest search; and here he ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... pea-poles!" they replied calmly. They had been too lazy or too indifferent to step ten feet on one side into the thicker copse, and leave the pretty path in its beauty, and the mischief was done, and after all it was not my business. I ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... their flocks. The hills of Rome, whose elevation was far more conspicuous in ancient times than it is now, presented a precipitous front of dark volcanic rock to the lake. Their slopes were covered with grass and with natural copse-wood, intermixed with tall ilex trees, or umbrella pines; while on their summits were little villages surrounded with Cyclopean walls perched there not only for security, but also for the healthier air, just as we see at the present day all over Italy. On the summit of the Capitoline ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... to the Chestnut Ridge, but Katrine was not there, nor did she come. The following day he went again with a similar resulting. The third day he saw her about noon on the river-bank, and she waved her hand to him in a cavalier fashion, disappearing into a small copse of dogwood, not to reappear. The ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... at Probstheida, Where he has bivouacked. Those round this way Are his left wing with Ney, that face the north Between Paunsdorf and Gohlis.—Thus, you see They are skilfully sconced within the villages, With cannon ranged in front. And every copse, Dingle, and grove is ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... path, past the copse of lilacs with their swelling dark buds, and the great three-cornered bed of tea roses and pansies in front of it, between the rows of china roses and past the lily and foxglove groups, we came last night to the spring garden ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sword; For I have sworn this braid to stain In the best blood that warms thy vein. Now, truce, farewell! and, ruth, begone!— Yet think not that by thee alone, Proud Chief! can courtesy be shown; Though not from copse, or heath, or cairn, Start at my whistle clansmen stern, Of this small horn one feeble blast Would fearful odds against thee cast. But fear not—doubt not—which thou wilt— We try this quarrel hilt to hilt."— ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... your hat when you turn your face to come homewards,' said she. Then he bought for the first two the fine clothes and pearls and diamonds they had asked for: and on his way home, as he rode through a green copse, a hazel twig brushed against him, and almost pushed off his hat: so he broke it off and brought it away; and when he got home he gave it to his daughter. Then she took it, and went to her mother's grave and planted it there; and cried so much that it was watered with her tears; and there ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... copse, the lane, the meadow path, The valleys, banks, and hedges, Were green with summer's aftermath, And gold ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... just beyond the cover, and the bustards ran across the heath as we roused them, and the larks sprung up and sang overhead, and the blackbirds called their alarm notes in the copse behind us, and the men talked of these things and pointed at the rabbits that sat up to look at us before they fled, as if there were no fighting at hand; for indeed I think that one notes all these well-known things more plainly when one's mind is strung up and over ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... sometimes called the puff-adder, as it inflates the skin of the head and neck when angry. The copper-bellied snake is also poisonous. There is a small snake of a deep grass green colour sometimes seen in the fields and open copse-woods. I do not think it is dangerous; I never heard of its biting any one. The stare-worm is also harmless. I am not sure whether the black snakes that live in the water are the same as the puff or black ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... trees in the valley behind the sleepy old town of Calcombe Pomeroy were decking themselves in the first wan green of their early spring foliage. The ragged robins were hanging out, pinky red, from the hedgerows; the cuckoo was calling from the copse beside the mill stream; and the merry wee hedge-warblers were singing lustily from the topmost sprays of hawthorn, with their full throats bursting tremulously in the broad sunshine. And Ernest Le Breton, too, filled with the season, had come ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... again with a slight expression of relief. They had entered the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she suddenly stopped and sat down upon a rustic bench. To his surprise he found that they were ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... swelling upland green, On which the fleecy flock in sportive play, And mirth, and gambol innocent, are seen. What pleasure through the scented copse to stray, And hear the stock dove coo its am'rous lay, Or climb the steep hill's side, beneath whose height Dashing afar, like drifted snow, their spray; The waves of ocean with an angry might, Flash in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... soon left the high road, and, striking across a field, led them through a copse where there was an interesting pond, swarming with tadpoles. The girls would have lingered here, trying to catch the funny, wriggling, little black objects, but Miss Frazer's patience gave way at last, and she hurried them on, declaring ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... undaunted quits the stand, Breaks in loose files his disencumbered band, Wheels on the howling glens each light-arm'd troop, And leads himself where Johnson tones his whoop, Pours thro his copse a well directed fire; The semisavage sees his tribes retire, Then follows thro the brush in full horse speed, And gains the hilltop where the Hurons lead; Here turns his courser; when a grateful sight Recals his stragglers, and restrains his flight. For Herkimer no longer now ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... from painful weariness; since here also, as thou listenest to the cicalas' tune, the stone-pine trembling in the wafts of west wind will lull thee, and the shepherd on the mountains piping at noon nigh the spring under a copse of leafy plane: so escaping the ardours of the autumnal dogstar thou wilt cross the height to-morrow; trust this good counsel that ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... dream soft nothings all a summer's day. In this fair glade were surely celebrate The nuptials of the year: and for her gift, Fair Flora, lightly loitering on the wing Of Zephyrus, tossed all her corbel out, Filling the air with bloom. From yonder copse, With kindling eye and hasty step, emerged The gladsome Spring, with leafy honours crowned, His following a troop of skipping lambs: And o'er yon hill, blushing for joy, approached His happy bride, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... as the sun climbed higher, and forced the fire into them. At last, after half an hour's trouble, the flames got a hold, and began to spread out like a fan, whereupon I went round to the farther side of the pan to wait for the lions, standing well out in the open, as we stood at the copse to-day where you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do, but I used to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds parting before the onward rush of some animal. 'Now for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... said Meg fiercely. "I have made up my mind, so there's an end. We meet by the Boshhuysen at five o'clock at the big oak in the copse, where we will ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of wind blew, and the air was heavy and turgid. On my way back, I had to pass a little copse which lay in a dell, and having noticed a little stream of water, I climbed over the fence in order to get a drink. Then, feeling deadly tired, I stretched myself at full length on the undergrowth, and determined ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... in the woodland copse, And forest boughs a fading glory wear; No breath of wind stirs in their hazy tops, Silence and peace ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... in years she was scarcely more than a child—all these had been very real to her. Pomona wandered through every orchard beside her beloved Vertumnus; Pan and his sylvan brood sported behind the foliage of every copse. She would as soon have thought of questioning their presence as of doubting her own being. Marcia believed; the average Roman patrician affected to believe and indulged in his polite, Hellenic doubts; the Carthaginian priest, while he believed, with all ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... river; those who sought it by a seeming direct trail at the end of an hour lost sight of it completely, or, abandoning the quest and retracing their steps, suddenly came upon the gap through which it was entered. That which from the Ridge appeared to be a copse of bushes beside the tiny dwelling were trees three hundred feet high; the cultivated lawn before it, which might have been covered by the traveller's handkerchief, was a field ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... way into a copse, and with my machete I cut down a moderately-sized branch, the end of which I sharpened to a point. Then, going forward and unrolling a leathern thong, thirty feet in length, and commonly called by us a lasso, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... bank of the river where they knew that the tiger was in hiding. They close up round him from the land side, leaving the river-bank open. Their only weapons are poles and sticks, so they set fire to the copse in order to make the beast leave his lair. When the tiger finds that there is no way out on the land side, he takes to the water to swim to some islet or to the other shore of the lake, but before he is far out half a dozen canoes cut through the water and surround ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... two miles out of his way in order that he might return by Sheepstone Birches, which was a little copse distant not above half a mile from Sheep's Acre farmhouse. A narrow angle of the little wood came up to the road, by which there was a gate leading into a grass meadow, which Sir Felix had remembered when he made his appointment. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... near the church of the Shaddock Grove, upon the western side, at the foot of a copse of bamboos, where, in coming from mass with her mother and Margaret, she loved to repose herself, seated by him whom she ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... parish-doctor. Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her resolution, the poor trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight. Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two of by-road between herself and the marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted animal, to hide and recover breath. Not until then for the first time did she venture to recall how she had looked over her shoulder before turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White Lion hanging across the road, and the fluttering market booths, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... "Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild; There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... dusky brown upon the breast would naturally suggest its popular title of "summer yellow-bird." It is one of the commonest of the mnio-tiltidae, or wood-warblers, though more properly a bird of the copse and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... in hand, perspiration on his forehead; that climb from base to summit stretches a healthy walker and does him good. At a turn of the road under the forest trees with shrubbery alongside he stopped suddenly, as a naturalist might pause with half-lifted foot beside a dense copse in which some unknown species of bird sang—a young bird just ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... on his horse, exclaiming, "I must catch my enchanted princess;" and giving his steed the rein, away they flew on the track of the doe; away they flew over fallen trunks and through brier and copse, until the panting steed would have recoiled before a wide hedge—but the emperor cried, "Over it! over it! The princess is beyond!" and the foaming horse gathered up his forelegs for the leap. He made a spring, but missed, and with a loud crash, horse and rider fell into the ditch on the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... eventide separated from his suite; so, wearied with the chase, he dismounted from his steed and seating himself by the side of a forest-path, he said to himself "The onager will doubtless seek cover in this copse." Suddenly he espied a light shining bright amidst the trees and, thinking that a hamlet might be hard by, he was minded to night there and at day-dawn to determine his further course. Hereupon he arose and walking towards ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... fill my gaze with blue and silver, Radiance through living roses, spires of green Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood, Where the hueless ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... in the woods, Amos Green lighting a dry wood fire in a thick copse where at a dozen paces it was invisible. A few drops of rain had fallen, so with the quick skill of the practised woodsman he made two little sheds of elm and basswood bark, one to shelter the two refugees, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Arc stood before the disguised Dauphin. Beneath is the broad bright Vienne coming down in great gleaming curves from Isle-Bouchard, and the pretty spire of St. Maurice, Henry's own handiwork perhaps, soaring lightly out of the tangled little town at our feet. Beyond, broken with copse and hedgerow and cleft by the white road to Loudun, rise the slopes of Pavilly leading the eye round, as it may have led the dying eye of the king, to the dim blue reaches of the west where Fontevraud ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... of sunset. 'It will be a fine day to-morrow,' I remarked looking at the clear sky. 'No, it will rain,' Kalinitch replied; 'the ducks yonder are splashing, and the scent of the grass is strong.' We drove into the copse. Kalinitch began singing in an undertone as he was jolted up and down on the driver's seat, and he kept gazing and gazing at ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... was the difference of height, it gave in those level wastes a sense of seeing yet farther and farther across land and sea. Inland the little wintry gardens faded into a confused grey copse; beyond that, in the distance, were long low barns of a lonely farmhouse, and beyond that nothing but the long East Anglian plains. Seawards there was no sail or sign of life save a few seagulls: and even they looked ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... tailor's, with a fresh tourist suit—probably an ostentatiously tweedy bicycling suit; and, with that in his luggage-carrier, would make straight on his machine for the country. He could change in some copse, and bury his own clothes, avoiding the blunders he has seen in others. Perhaps he might ride for the first twenty or thirty miles out of London to some minor side-station, and then go on by train ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... round the hill, filling the air with long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents—scents of leaf and grass, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day he went forth to the chase taking with him nets and springes and other gear he needed and fared to a garden-site with trees bedight and branches interlaced tight wherein all the fowls did unite; and arriving at a tangled copse he planted his trap in the ground and he looked around for a hiding-place and took seat therein concealed. Suddenly a Birdie approaching the trap-side began scraping the earth and, wandering round about ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... is careless, youth is fleet, With heart and wing of bird! The lark flew up beneath our feet, To his copse the pheasant whirr'd; ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... but floated quietly in a calm basin surrounded by trees. During the night it had been carried far down in the direction of Lake Winnipeg, and had got entangled in one of the clumps of wood with which some parts of that region were studded. The hut had been so completely thrust into the copse that it was quite encompassed by foliage, and nothing of the surrounding country was visible from the chimney-top. The only thing that remained obvious to old Liz was the fact that the hut still floated, and was held in position by ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... Captain Campbell has spent the night in reconnoitering on his own account, and has discovered that a thousand Spanish musketeers are lying in ambush in the copse in ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... jaded steer, who, all day long, Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, When ev'ning came, and her sweet cooling hour, Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, Where greener herbage wav'd, or clearer streams Invited him to slake his burning thirst? The man were crabbed who should say him nay; The man were churlish who should ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... trees at a little distance from the spot, and as the dove ascended, a hawk suddenly rose from the copse and pursued the dove; and the dove was terrified, and soared circling high above the crowd, when lo, the hawk, poising itself one moment on its wings, swooped with a sudden swoop, and, abandoning its prey, alighted on the plumed ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... minutes to hear a clever bird giving imitations of the cuckoo clock, but the joke palls. The Archdeacon's Daughter has a wider repertoire. And so? though the nightingales are still singing, conversation springs up in the copse as if it were a drawing-room and the singers human. My host discourses of the litter of pigs just arrived from the Great Nowhere, and dilates upon the fact that of the 3,423,807 pigs in England no two tails are curled alike. Perhaps even so no two nightingales curl their phrase identically, and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... for the two fugitives who had escaped us would certainly have borne witness against us. Safety could only be found in flight. I, however, seized the musket and hat of him I had first killed, and we then gained the copse, and after that the forest. The road was round about, and it was night ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... When yon dim grey woods grow green, and the brown hollows are yellow with kingcups and primroses, the old melody you know so well shall begin again, and the thrush from the oak top shall answer to the goldentoned blackbird in the copse, saying—'Our mother is not dead, but has been sleeping. She is awake again—let all the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a blot in it. Great heavens! I had forgotten it and left it out of doors at the far end of the garden in the most removed asparagus bed. For my historical studies I had selected the asparagus bed which was like a bit of copse, for the feathery green plants, past their season, grew high and luxuriant; a hazel glen, leafy and impenetrable, and as shady as a verdant grotto, was the spot I had chosen for the more exacting and laborious work of Latin versification. As this time ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Then to the copse Thick with entangled grass, or prickly furze, With silence lead thy many-coloured hounds ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... wagon stuck fast in the mire, which caused my companions a great deal of labor and much delay. At last I halted to await the coming of the other teams. Suddenly there fell a shot from the dense growth of a wild sunflower copse. It missed my head by a very close margin and just grazed the ear of one of the mules. I believe that if I had attempted to rejoin the train then I would have been killed from ambush. Instead, I quickly secured the brake of my wagon, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... In meadow or in copse, Whether at break of day Or when the twilight drops, My heart goes sighing on, Desiring ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that we might find nothing to stop us in passing over the intervening space. We continued on, concealing ourselves as much as possible beneath the hedges of cacti, or the trunks of trees. We had got close to a thick copse, as we should call it, only that the plants were of a very different character, when I heard a sound of feet passing apparently before us. Then I heard a remark made in French by one person to another, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... day of his burial, wandering in the neighborhood of his castle, and visiting, barefoot and bareheaded, the little corner of the plain where the cemetery must have been. Sometimes, a shepherd straying through the adjoining copse in search of his flock, scattered by an evening storm, has been frightened by the fearful aspect of the phantom, seen by the glare of the lightning, flitting about amongst the graves. He has heard him, in the pauses of the tempest, imploring the pity of their mute inhabitants; ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... about the poachers, hang 'em! It's about Robin Frost, sir. What on earth have come to him I can't conceive. This last few nights he have took to prowling out with a gun. He lays himself down in the copse, or a ditch, or the open field—no matter where—and there he stops, on the watch, with his gun ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond. At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was peace for Roger's soul. The next day at ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... came from the thick copse in which she was concealed. "You have had news, I know," she said, stepping into view and glancing searchingly into his troubled countenance. "Is he wounded?" He could have gathered her into his arms and kissed her as she stood before him, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them a thrush shot into the air a ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... workers; I would gladly add a few unpublished facts to their life-history. But I must abandon the idea. The Water Spider is not found in my district. The Mygale, the expert in hinged doors, is found there, but very seldom. I saw one once, on the edge of a path skirting a copse. Opportunity, as we know, is fleeting. The observer, more than any other, is obliged to take it by the forelock. Preoccupied as I was with other researches, I but gave a glance at the magnificent subject ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... in it. So, when he had got his sight again, he went down to the shore and made signs to the lions that they should all lie close together like a raft; then he stood upon their backs while they swam with him to the mainland. When he had reached the shore he went up into a birchen copse, and made the lions lie quiet. Then he stole up to the castle, like a thief, to see if he couldn't lay hands on his belt; and when he got to the door, he peeped through the keyhole, and there he saw his belt hanging up over a door in the kitchen. ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... heard the sound of twigs being broken near them, as if some one were making his way through the copse. Soon they could distinguish, in addition, the heavy tramp of footsteps—they sounded as heavy as those of elephants to them, with their ears to the ground— trampling down the thick undergrowth and rotten twigs in the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... of brick-making, for King Charles II had planned to build a grand palace at Winchester on the model of the great French palace of Versailles, and it is said that Dell copse was formed by the digging out of bricks for the purpose. It was to reach all over the downs, with fountains and water playing in them, and a great tower on Oliver's Battery, with a light to guide the ships in the Channel. There ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would but come my way! For 'the mule it was slow, and the lane it was dark, When out of the copse leapt a gallant young spark. Says, 'Tis not for nought you've been begging all day: So remember your toll, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Sound as if somebody had stubbed his Toe and dropped a Crockery Store. Then Cyrenius was seen to Break the Record for the Running Long Jump, off the Front Stoop into an Oleander Tub, while wearing a Screen Door. After him came the Worldly Husband. For several Minutes the Copse where once the Garden smiled was full of ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... received any serious injury, she thought it better to leave him to put matters straight for himself, knowing that young men are very sensitive about being interfered with or helped when their pride has been wounded by any humiliating catastrophe. So she turned aside into a small copse through which was a short cut to the house, intending to go forward and be prepared to render any ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... residence of Queen Victoria, border its eastern margin. This was the ancient manor of Austerbourne, and its owner in the Civil War buried all his money and plate in an adjoining wood, called the Money Copse, so as to preserve it. When peaceful days came back he went to get it, but found he had concealed it so thoroughly that it could not be recovered. The queen bought the estate in 1844, and the plain mansion was extended into an elegant marine ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... landscape, is not only found here, but in its proper place. In front, and immediately under the eye, is a smooth expanse of park-like enclosure, spotted with native elm, ash, &c. of the finest growth: on the right a skirting oak wood, with jutting points of grey rock; on the left a rising copse. Still forward are seen the aged groves of Bolton Park, the growth of centuries; and farther yet, the barren and rocky distances of Simonseat and Barden Fell contrasted with the warmth, fertility, and luxuriant foliage of the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the copse? ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... with floating shadows, which seemed to glide into it from the dark recesses of the near woods, and in a copse some distance away a nightingale was singing to his mate, and filling the silence with melody. The notes fluted sweetly through the still air, mingling with the sigh of the rising wind and the musical splashing of the fountain. This ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Sedley till we got to the big pond, and we began to slide, and the ice was so nice and hard— you can't think. He showed me how to take a good long slide, and said I might go out to the other end of the pond by the copse, by the great old tree. And I set off, but before I got there, out it jumped, out of the copse, and waved its arms, and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed out of the village and into a thick pine-wood with a path scarcely broad enough for the cart. Of a sudden the silence into which we again fell was broken by piercing screams for "Help" coming from a copse on the right. Instantly the driver checked the horse, jumped to the ground, and drew a long ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fighting portion of his headquarters, staved off the attack until the arrival of reinforcements from the 88th Brigade enabled it to be driven back in disorder. On November 30, 1917, during the German counter-attack from Fontaine Notre Dame to Tadpole Copse, in the Northern Sector of the Cambrai zone, the Germans forced their way into our foremost positions, and opened a gap between the 1/6th and 1/15th London Regiments. Local counter-attacks led by the two battalion commanders with all available men, including the personnel ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... first sprig, dear father, that rubs against your hat on your way home," said she. Then he bought for the two first the fine clothes and pearls and diamonds they had asked for: and on his way home, as he rode through a green copse, a sprig of hazel brushed against him, so he broke it off and when he got home he gave it to his daughter. Then she took it, and went to her mother's grave and planted it there, and cried so much that it was watered with ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... valley, and the 71st Infantry Brigade on the left next to the Americans, both made excellent way, the former capturing the very strong Mannikin Hill position, and the latter the formidable Doon Mill and Doon Copse position, and making a ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... sporting dream. He greatly wondered how some men could be E'er guilty of, such wanton cruelty, As to pursue, with horses and with hounds, Such harmless creature over all their grounds; Hunt him o'er swamps and fields, and mountain slopes, Through pebbly streams, or shady hazel copse, Till they have driven him at last to bay, Toward the close of some most sultry day. Wondered how any one, with tearless eye, Could mark his sufferings, and then watch him die. Oh, cruel man! when will thy thirst for blood Be turned to energy in doing good? When will Creation's ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... I composed, and ye are organized by the same laws. I have something beyond this, but I will call it a defect, not an endowment, if it leads me to misery, while ye are happy. Just then, there emerged from a near copse two goats and a little kid, by the mother's side; they began to browze the herbage of the hill. I approached near to them, without their perceiving me; I gathered a handful of fresh grass, and held it out; the little one nestled close to its ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... gold: in purple, and azure and crimson, with a wealth of slowly falling leaves which soon would pass away, the poor perished glories of the fair golden year. The wild geese flying South sent their faint carol from the clouds—the swamp sparrow twittered, and the still copse was stirred by the silent croak of some wandering wild turkey, or the far forest made most musical with that sound which the master of Wharncliffe Lodge delighted in, the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the Scots by capturing the chalk-pit south of Loos and digging in. They did this after savage fighting in the pit, where they bayoneted many Germans, though raked by machine-gun bullets from a neighboring copse, which was a fringe of gashed and tattered trees. But some of the London boys were mixed up with the advancing Scots and went on with them, and a battalion of Scots Fusiliers who had been in the supporting brigade of the 15th ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... The dark green moss, the resting bough, At broken panes, that taps and flies, Illumes and shades the maiden's eyes At day-break, and, with whisper'd joy, Wakes the light-hearted shepherd boy: These, with thy noble woods and dells, The hazel copse, the village bells, Charm'd more the passing sultry hours Than HEREFORD, with ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... water-courses, revetting their crumbling trenches, and rebuilding their flimsy dugouts, and then returning to their reserve lines, always leaving behind them in hastily dug graves over the parados of their trenches, or in the little improvised cemeteries by Hooge, or Maple Copse or Hill 60, a few more of their comrades, and ever sending down the line their maimed and broken to be refitted for war or discharged again to civilian life. It was altogether a ghastly business, a kind of warfare calling for an endurance of the finest temper and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... characterized by a full share of the ardent and impulsive energy belonging to his years, was returning from the chase, he happened to pass by the place where the herdsman lived. Ascanius was followed by his dogs, and he had his bow and arrows in his hand. As he was thus passing along a copse of wood, near a brook, the dogs came suddenly upon Sylvia's stag. The confiding animal, unconscious of any danger, had strayed away from the herdsman's grounds to this grove, and had gone down to the brook to drink. The dogs immediately sprang upon him, in full cry. Ascanius followed, drawing ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as it might, he was extremely glad when, after forcing his way through a sticky clayey path through a hazel copse, his eye fell on a wide reach of meadow land, the railroad making a hard line across it at one end, and in the midst, about half a mile off, the river meandering like a blue ribbon lying loosely across the green flat, the handsome buildings ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed, but Dick and Billy had seen no further token of any Raven on the move. They gained a thick hazel copse, and crept into the heart of it to wait in ambush a little for any sign of an opponent's presence. Peering through the boughs, Billy ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... tell of: toward sunset they came out of the mountains into a very fair green plain, wherein were neat and sheep a many; but though there were not a few houses of the herdsmen about, they made not for any of them, but took harbour in a little copse by a stream-side, and supped of such meat as they had; save that the two of them rode out into the plain and drove back with them a milch-cow, which they milked then and there ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... and neither here nor there is he able to persuade himself to discover a counsellor or a friend. In this connection, we do well to follow the poet's train of thought in the lyric called "In a Wood," where he enters a copse dreaming that, in that realm of "sylvan peace," Nature would offer "a soft release from man's unrest." He immediately observes that the pine and the beech are struggling for existence, and trying to blight each other with dripping poison. He sees the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... her face propped in both hands, and her bosom pressed against the table! I began to speak of our yesterday's reading; she flushed, asked me whether I had given the parrot any hemp-seed before starting, began humming some little song aloud, and all at once was silent again. The copse ended on one side in a rather high and abrupt precipice; below coursed a winding stream, and beyond it, over an immense expanse, stretched the boundless prairies, rising like waves, spreading wide like a table-cloth, and broken here and there by ravines. ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the way round the copse, followed by our travelers; they soon arrived on the other side of it, with their guns all ready; but on their arrival, to their astonishment they perceived the lion and the male gemsbok lying together. ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... draw our covers to-morrow," announced the lady, with a certain heavy satisfaction. "Smithers is confident that we'll be able to show him some sport; he swears he's seen a fox in the nut copse ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... home such a boy might have said to the others: "G'wan, these're fer me." Again, when I inquired my way of a tiny, ragged mite, he directed me to "go as straight as ever you can go, sir, across the cricket field; then take your first right; go straight through the copse, sir," he called after me. The copse? Perhaps I was thinking of the "cops" of New York. Then I understood that the urchin was speaking of a ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... Saxon king, Stood on the winding shores of Thames alone, And fixed a sparkling eye upon Saint Paul's: The sun new-risen had touched its roofs that laughed Their answer back. Beyond it London spread; But all between the river and that church Was slope of grass and blossoming orchard copse Glittering with dews dawn-reddened. Bertha here, That church begun, had thus besought her Lord, 'Spare me this bank which God has made so fair! Here let the little birds have leave to sing, The bud to blossom! Here, the vespers o'er, Lovers ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Thither she steered, defying wind and snow; guided by here a thorn-tree, there an old, doddered oak, which had not quite lest their identity under the whelming mask of snow. Now and then she stopped to listen; but never a word or sound heard she, till right from where the copse-wood grew thick and tangled at the base of the rock, round which she was winding, she heard a moan. Into the brake—all snow in appearance—almost a plain of snow looked on from the little eminence where she stood—she plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling, bruising herself, fighting ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few, sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling. What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth, distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one who is a botanist, a poet and an observer. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... red earth twisted away until it was lost in the fringe of a small copse on the left and had dipped behind a hillock on the right. Flat open country stretched ahead, grass lands and fields ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... not halted here, but emerging into a small meadow, had crossed into a close copse of young firs and elders, in whose midst a huge stump, whitened and splintered, rose some twenty-five feet into ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... would go mad unless she found something to hold her mind back from those hideous channels into which it slipped so readily. She snatched up the book which King had left with her, and forced herself to read. Pages eluded her, but here and there single lines or words caught her attention as a thorny copse catches and plucks the garments of one going blindly through it. So she was arrested by the line: "In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth." And this was one of the times when she threw the book down and got up and walked back and forth impatiently. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... very far from Hampton Privets House. From these cottages there was a path across the fields back to Bullhampton, which led by the side of a small wood belonging to the Marquis. There was a good deal of woodland just here, and this special copse, called Hampton bushes, was known to be one of the best pheasant coverts in that part of the country. Whom should they meet, standing on the path, armed with his gun, and with his keeper behind him armed with ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope |
