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Moss-grown   /mɔs-groʊn/   Listen
Moss-grown

adjective
1.
Overgrown with moss.  Synonym: mossy.
2.
(used pejoratively) out of fashion; old fashioned.  Synonyms: fogyish, mossy, stick-in-the-mud, stodgy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Moss-grown" Quotes from Famous Books



... weather sets in, and the front-gardens begin to look gay, the graveller loads his cart with gravel, and shouldering his spade, crawls leisurely through the suburbs with his companion, peering into every garden; and wherever he sees that the walks are grown dingy or moss-grown, he knocks boldly at the door, and demands to be set to work in mending your ways. The best thing you can do is to make the bargain and employ him at once; if not, he will be round again to-morrow, and to-morrow, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... the city's paven way, Where redbreast knows the white moon's ray; It sentinels the moss-grown homestead, And waits the men of ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... unceasing, fountain-like gush, and streamed down the walls outside. There were oozings of water from the old moss-grown roof, which continued dropping on the self-same spots with a monotonous sad splash. They even soaked through into the floor inside, which was of hardened earth studded with pebbles ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... very ancient feudal castle, only just enough of it remaining to give an idea of the shape it once had been, for regardless of the respect that is due to antiquity the keepers had carted away loads of the solid masonry to build their houses, leaving the place but a beautiful moss-grown chaos. ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... not stand in stately avenues, nor did the antlers of the deer wave above the sombre fern; it was not the domain of a grand seigneur, but of an old, long-descended English squire. Antiquity spoke in the moss-grown palings in the shadowy groves, in the sharp gable-ends and heavy mullions of the house, as it now came in view, at the base of a hill covered with wood—and partially veiled by the shrubs of the neglected pleasure-ground, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and about a quarter of a mile from the house. It lay in a sort of dip in the ground, and was surrounded on all four sides—for it was exactly square—by very steep high banks, which had been cut into by steep stone steps, now gray, and broken, and moss-grown, which led down straight into the water. This pool was called Shadonake Bath. How long the steps had existed no one knew; probably for several hundred years, for there was a ghost story connected with ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... while the hot tears fell upon his baby cheeks,—"You will comfort me, my little son. You will take care of your mother and of baby Madge." And he remembered the cottage in the country where they had lived, the porch where the rose-tree grew, the orchard and the moss-grown well, the tall white lilies in the garden that stood like fairies guarding the house, and the pear-tree that was ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.

... of gardens and villas, which, previous to the revolution of Kara Georg, was occupied principally by Turks. Passing down a shady lane my attention was arrested by a rotten moss-grown garden door, at the sight of which memory leaped backwards for four or five years. Here I had spent a happy forenoon with Colonel H——, and the physician of the former Pasha, an old Hanoverian, who, as surgeon to a British ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... statue of Liberty that crowns the Capitol in Washington, and Washington's own monument which stands in Richmond, and many of his other works. My own early childhood was spent there, among the old-time gardens, and avenues of lordly cypresses and of bitter orange trees, and the moss-grown fountains, and long walks fragrant with half-wild roses and sweet flowers that no one thinks of planting now. Beyond, a wild waste of field and broken land led up to Santa Maria Maggiore; and the grand old bells ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... western gate, Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook, From its full laver, pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. And frequent, on the everlasting hills, Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid The silent majesty of these deep ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... reveled in its depths of tangled color and fragrance, as arm in arm the girls wandered down broad, box-bordered walks, from terrace to terrace by way of moss-grown stone stairs, deep sunk in the grassy lawn, and now and again the New England ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... plundered shrine and raise from their graves the band of martyred nuns, ceased from his ministrations, softly as a bubble frees itself from the pipe that shaped it, and floated away on the breath of the wind. Through a breach in the moss-grown wall, the first sunbeam stole in and pointed a bright finger across the cloister garth at the charred spot in the centre, where missals and parchment rolls had made a roaring fire to warm the invaders' ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... the "blaze" I cut myself, and there's the stumbling ledge, With quartz "outcrop" that lay atop, now leveled to its edge, And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips, And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips. And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher— Ah yes!—still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... grave". Liquors "beginning to look scarce". Subdued and sheepish-looking bacchanals. Nothing extenuated, nor aught set down in malice. Boating on river. Aquatic plants. Bridge swept away in torrent. Loss of canoe. Branch from moss-grown fir-tree "a cornice wreathed with purple-starred tapestry". A New Year's present from the river. A two-inch spotted trout. No fresh meat for a month. "Dark and ominous rumors". Dark hams, rusty pork, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... the polity which thus assumed a prominent organization have been already indicated. There was no revolution, no radical change. The ancient rugged tree of Netherland liberty—with its moss-grown trunk, gnarled branches, and deep-reaching roots—which had been slowly growing for ages, was still full of sap, and was to deposit for centuries longer its annual rings of consolidated and concentric strength. Though lopped of some luxuriant boughs, it was sound ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... away. A slight breeze rustled amongst the cypresses and the olive trees, and the air grew clearer. The sun was low in the heavens, and long shadows lay across the brilliant patches of flowers, half wild, half cultivated, and on the moss-grown walks. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a moss-grown level. Here they found an encampment of some two hundred Indians, who proved to be friendly. The travelers rested and looked about. Not far away appeared [A]"a rude heap of massive stones, piled upon one another a mile ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... each other, all forest clad, and many a mighty and moss-grown trunk in that great wilderness told of the forest primeval which in the early days had covered all this part of South Germany. Elsewhere in the land, railways had been built, until there was scarcely a hamlet whose slumbers were undisturbed by the shrill ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... people of the village began to whisper that he was going mad. At Milton Park they heard of it, and Artis and Henderson hurried to Helpstone to look after their friend. They found him sitting on a moss-grown stone, at the end of the village nearest the heath. Gently they took him by the arm, and, leading him back to the hut, told Mrs. Clare that it would be best to start at once to Northborough, the Earl being dissatisfied that the removal had not ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... pile of these on the margin of the creek, and apply his torch to them, took but a moment; and in an instant a bright, white flame flashed and lit up the little sheltered alcove. Another, and the almost overcome girl was placed on a seat of soft, dry shavings, against the moss-grown rock, under the rude roof, out of the reach of the snow or wind; and another fire was lit of the dry shingle blocks, at her feet, from which her saturated shoes were removed, and to ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... as the sun was low, and a purple bluish smoke hung like a thin veil over the tops of the forest, Brita had taken out her knitting and seated herself on a large moss-grown stone, on the croft. Her eyes wandered over the broad valley which was stretched out below, and she could see the red roofs of the Blakstad mansion peeping forth between the fir-trees. And she wondered what they were doing down there, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... rather question the Earth's self. Invoke The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day Whose roots are hillocks where the children play; Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage Their journey still when his boughs shrink ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti

... up. Only so lately as 1910 there were leading women in one of the large labor conferences who protested against women entering the legislature, using against that very simple and normal step in advance the very same moss-grown arguments as we hear used in this country against the ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... thy blue lips, Northern lake! Moss-grown rocks, your silence break! Tell the tale, thou ancient tree! Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee! Speak, and tell us how and when Lived and died ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... a moss-grown spring: They leaned soft cheeks together there, Mingled the dark and sunny hair, And heard the wooing thrashes sing. O budding ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... there for me to say? There wa'n't any more suspicion in them gentle blue eyes of his than in a baby's. Forty years in Pemaquid! Must be some moss-grown, peaceful spot, where a man can grow up so innocent and simple, and yet have the stuff in him Uncle Jimmy must have had. So I tows him back to 42d-st., points him towards the new lib'ry again, and turns him loose; him in his old blue ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... its wealth, by a very few natives, who live only upon the sea-coast. The inland part of the island is one immense mountain, or pile of mountains, amongst which, those who dare approach near enough, may, we are assured, discern the moss-grown and antiquated towers and pinnacles of a stately, but ruinous castle, the habitation of the sovereign of the island, in which she has been, enchanted for a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... present day Gluck appears to have vanquished Piccini, because occasionally an opera of the former is performed, while Piccini's works are only known to the musical antiquarian. But even the marble temples of Gluck are moss-grown and neglected, and that great man is known to the present day rather as one whose influence profoundly colored and changed the philosophy of opera, than through any immediate acquaintance with his productions. The connoisseurs ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... for both of them. But there's one thing that would happen: he would grow away from his mother. He'd come back to me a stranger. He'd come back a little ashamed of his shabby prairie mater, with her ten-years-old style of hair-dressing and her moss-grown ideas of things and her bald-looking prairie home with no repose and no dignifying background and neither a private gym nor a butler to wheel in the cinnamon-toast. He'd be having all those things, under Uncle Chandler's roof: he'd get used to ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... loved the clear old tree! Summer after summer did they return to build nests among its moss-grown branches; and the branches, glad that the songsters had come back again, would put forth green leaves to hide them from prying eyes, so that they could rest there securely. Can you wonder, then, that they sang sweet songs of gratitude to it, and that the little brook should murmur ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... the shade of the house," and after a moment the two came along the shady terrace whose outer margin was set at intervals with stained and discolored marble nymphs upon pedestals, and between the nymphs with moss-grown stone benches. They halted before a bench upon which, earlier in the day, a rug had been spread out to dry in the sun and had been forgotten, and after a moment's further hesitation they sat down upon it. Their faces were turned toward ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... skulls and bones strewn round him, In joyous fury urging the keen steel Against the surface of his grinding wheel. The place was a wild hollow, circled round With barren hills, and on the bottom ground Stood the Green Chapel, moss-grown, solitary;— In sooth, it seemed the devil's mortuary! The Green Knight's back was turned, and he stirred not Till Gawayne hailed him sharply; then he shot One glance—as when, o'erhead, a living wire Startles the night with flashes of green fire;— Then hurried forward, bland as bland ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... also left the marks of ruin stamped upon every object around him. The lawn was little better than a common; the pond was thick with weeds and sluggish water-plants, that almost covered its surface; and a light, elegant bridge, that spanned a river which ran before the house, was also moss-grown and dilapidated. The hedges were mixed up with briers, the gates broken, or altogether removed, the fields were rank with the ruinous luxuriance of weeds, and the grass-grown avenues spoke of solitude and desertion. The still appearance, too, ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... landing-place, plashy with the tread of cows and giving on to a lane that led towards the smoke of human habitations. Edward jumped ashore, alert for exploration, and strode off without waiting to see if we followed; but I lingered behind, having caught sight of a moss-grown water-gate hard by, leading into a garden that from the brooding quiet lapping it round, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... and nothing remained but the narrow channel of the brook itself, the smooth stones making a precarious and uncertain footing for the adventurous explorer. How soothing was the ceaseless plash of that little stream, fretting its moss-grown banks and dashing in miniature surge against the stones in its path! What infinite peace reigned in this place, around which the brotherhood of mountains had gathered, to hold it inviolate against all comers! The great rocks were moss-covered, the steep slopes on either side were faintly ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... been renovating my father's large workroom. That delightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and the green weather-stains we have known all our lives on the high whitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard, for the coolness, in summertime. Among old Watteau's workpeople came his son, "the genius," ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... were it not for the charms of culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succession of small ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... while he climbed up the dry watercourse on foot. He found, as Phil had said, that it was not far. Another hundred yards up the boulder-strewn break in the ridge, and he came out into a beautiful glade, where he found the spring, clear and cold, under a moss-grown rock, in the deep shade of an old gnarled and twisted cedar. Gratefully he threw himself down and drank long and deep; then sat for a few moments' rest, before making his way back to his horse. The moist, black earth ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... from where this wall rises from the lawn stands the ever-plashing fountain. The basin is circular, while around runs a paved path, hemmed in by smoke-blackened laurels and cut off from the public way by iron railings. The water falls with pleasant cadence into a small basin set upon a base of moss-grown rockwork. Looking south one meets a vista of green grass, of never-ceasing London traffic, and one tall distant factory chimney away in the grey haze, while around the fountain are four stunted trees. On the right stretches a strip of garden, in spring green and gay with ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux

... hummocks, now ploughing through stretches of soft, sandy soil. Above and on either side, the great trees interlaced their branches, sometimes letting them droop till they brushed against Hilda's cheek, sometimes lifting them to give her a glimpse of cool vistas of dusky green, shade within shade,—moss-grown hollows, where the St. John's-wort showed its tarnished gold, and white Indian pipe gleamed like silver along the ground; or stony beds over which, in the time of the spring rains, little brown brooks ran foaming and bubbling ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... than a violent death. In truth, Sir, the attempt was no less an affront upon the understanding of that respectable people than it was an attack on their property. They chose rather that their ancient, moss-grown castles should moulder into decay, under the silent touches of time, and the slow formality of an oblivious and drowsy exchequer, than that they should be battered down all at once by the lively efforts of a pensioned engineer. As it is the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... by this time, into the heart of the city, ever and anon the streets pass through some square or piazza, each like the other. In the centre stands a broken fountain, moss-grown and weedy, whence the water spouts languidly; on the one side is a church, on the other some grim old palace, which from its general aspect, and the iron bars before its windows, bears a striking resemblance to Newgate gone to ruin. Grass grows between the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... her grave should be Upon the bare top of a sunny hill, Among the moorlands of her own fair land, Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones In gorse and heather all embosomed. There should be no tall stone, no marble tomb Above her gentle corse;—the ponderous pile Would press too rudely on those fairy limbs. The turf should lightly he, that marked her home. A sacred spot it would be—every bird That came ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... "Ready for Boston!"—and you have a scene of such gayety as Lucca could never have witnessed in her piazza at high noon on a summer's day. Even our Campo Santo, if the Lucchese had cared to look round the corner of the meeting-house at its moss-grown head stones, could have had little to remind him of home, though it has antiquity and a proper quaintness. But not for him, not for them of his clime and faith, is the pathos of those simple memorial slates with their winged skulls, changing ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... Rosa lies, And love shall o'er the moss-grown bed, When dew-drops leave the weeping skies. His tenderest ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... so well: the avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so sweetly on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... the high-banked hazel hedge which overhung the road. Heedless of the impediments thrown in his way by the undergrowth of a rough ring fence, he struck through the opening that presented itself, and, climbing over the moss-grown paling, trod presently upon the elastic sward of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... indeed! Their pretty gingham frocks were limp and stringy with dampness, and soiled and stained from contact with the buckets and the moss-grown sides ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... up the moss-grown steps at the end of the courtyard, and out on to the rampart. A view of infinite beauty lay before her: a vast expanse of green fields through which the river Neckar flows gently, a smiling valley glittering in the morning sunshine and radiant with ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... it with much curiosity. In his eyes it seemed exactly adapted to its owner, and formed to hide dark and guilty deeds. It was a stern, sombre-looking mansion, built of a dark grey stone, with tall square chimneys, and windows with heavy mullions. High stone walls, hoary and moss-grown, ran round the gardens and courts, except on the side of the river, where there was a terrace overlooking the stream, and forming a pleasant summer's walk. At the back of the house were a few ancient oaks and sycamores, and in the gardens ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... walls of old Cartagena, the morning beams began to glow in roseate hues on the red-tiled roofs of this ancient metropolis of New Granada, and glance in shafts of fire from her glittering domes and towers. Swiftly they climbed the moss-grown sides of church and convent, and glided over the dull white walls of prison and monastery alike. Pouring through half-turned shutters, they plashed upon floors in floods of gold. Tapping noiselessly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... villages ebbed and flowed beneath that ancient roof? You heard the hum of droning bees and followed the airy wings of butterflies fluttering over the grave-stones in the old churchyard, and underneath almost every moss-grown tablet some humble romance lies ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the path through the wood and went straight on, not listening to the lad's chatter nor making any myself. The shade was welcome enough; there were pretty places for those that had eyes to see them—waterfalls splashing down from the moss-grown rocks above; little pools, dark and wonderfully blue; here and there a bit of green, which might have been the lawn of a country house. But of dwelling or of people I saw nothing, and to what the boy fancied that he ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... could distinguish no means of approach to the impregnable fortress, but on coming at last to the base of the rock we found a long flight of narrow steps mounting zig-zag up its dark, moss-grown face. When the cavalcade halted before them our trumpeters blew thrice shrill blasts upon their big ivory horns, and like magic the ponderous iron gate far above instantly swung open, and the walls ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... to mock his barrenness. The flowers that wreathe his couch stifle him with their sensuous perfume and he flies from the nightingale's passionate song as the slave flees the scourge. Through the dark paths and over the moss-grown bowlders he stumbles on, across the fields where the fireflies glow like showers of flame, beneath the tall cedars whose every sigh seems drawn from the depths of an accepted lover's soul. Exhausted, he sinks down where the waters burst ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... of June he had walked Ardea around and about through the fragrant summer wood of the upper creek valley, retracing, in part, the footsteps of the boy whose fishing had been spoiled and the little girl who was to be bullied into submission; and so rambling they had come at length to the old moss-grown foot-log which had been a newly-felled tree in the former time. Tom went first across the rustic bridge, holding the hand of ecstatic thrillings, and pausing in mid-passage that he might have excuse ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... whispered overhead. He was moving through an avenue that led towards big iron gates beside a little porter's lodge. He saw the hollies, and smelt the laurustinus. There lay the triangle of uncut grass at the cross-roads, the long, grey, wooden palings built upon moss-grown bricks; and against the sky he just caught a glimpse of the feathery, velvet cedar crests, crests that once held nails of golden meteors for ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose honoured line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... What thy part is, is but this: Deliver this packet into the hand of Master Robert Catesby himself. Thou knowest him. Thou wilt make no error. Seek him not at any tavern or public place. Go to a lone house at Lambeth, with moss-grown steps down to the water's edge. Go by thine own wherry thither, and go alone. Thou canst not mistake the house. There is none like it besides. It stands upon the water, and none other building is nigh at hand; but a giant elm overshadows it, and there is ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... yon ruined abbey's moss-grown piles Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, Where through some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levelled rule of streaming light, While sullen, sacred silence reigns around, Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bower Amid the mouldering caverns ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... deep-toned organ rolled through the marble hall and then burst forth into a light, gay air, which, to her unaccustomed ears, sounded strangely in a house of worship. God seemed nearer in the little church at home, which, nestled down among the grassy mounds and moss-grown headstones, seemed always ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... the creek bank, and then jumped ashore. She looked round at her father, but he was absorbed in his fishing and his thoughts, and so the little girl slipped away into the bush. She made her way among the trees quickly, keeping to the line of the creek. Presently she sat down on a moss-grown stump and thought deeply. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse with a faint smile lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... white-pines,—the cast-off garments of last year; part of the way with green grass, close-cropped and very fresh for the season. Sometimes the trees met across it; sometimes it was bordered on one side by an old rail-fence of moss-grown cedar, with bushes sprouting beneath it, and thrusting their branches through it; sometimes by a stone wall of unknown antiquity, older than the wood it closed in. A stone wall, when shrubbery has grown around it, and thrust its roots beneath it, becomes a very pleasant and meditative object. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... Pevy seemed to be clinging to the side of the hill, and was approached by a narrow stairway of greyish stone, climbing up between moss-grown walls. I first passed through the modest little churchyard, with its humble tombs half hidden in the grass, and read ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... before two days have passed I shall again be with you, press your impassioned lips, call you my loved: my own! Again shall we wander through the silent garden by the river groves; again shall we sit upon the moss-grown seats in the still evening hours; again shall we utter those wild words that caused our hearts to vibrate with mutual happiness! Zoe, pure and innocent as the angels." The child-like simplicity of that question, "Enrique, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... scattered about the place. Some loitered on the lawn by the flower-beds and the fountain; some visited the stables and the home-farm, with its cow-houses and dairy and piggeries; some the neglected greenhouses, and some the equally neglected old- fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and their moss-grown statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere visible to receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them to the plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of some people ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... women went to the State House and asked Governor Brough to call a special session. This he agreed to do and set the date for July 28. While the suffragists were never in doubt of ratification they were genuinely surprised to find a few real enemies in the House and to hear some of the moss-grown arguments of 1911. The Senate ratified by a vote of 29 to two and the House by 74 to 15. Henry Ponder of Lawrence county introduced the resolution in the Senate and said he believed his children would be prouder of that act of his than of anything else he might ever do. An identical ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... measure, recovered her self-possession, she turned her head towards the river-bank and called my attention to the charming effect of a cottage embosomed in trees, from which rickety steps, moss-grown and picturesquely studded with flowers, led down to the river. One of Isabey's delicious water-colors, dropped here without his signature. Louise—for art, no matter how humble, always expands the mind—has a taste ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... concerning it. At so great a distance, and with the hot sunlight shining full upon it, the fort might have been a strip of white sand; later it was decided to be a tribunal of unusual proportions, and at last when it loomed full upon us in all the picturesqueness of its gray, moss-grown walls, with weeds trailing in luxurious profusion from every crevice, we decided that there lived the American inhabitants of Misamis. Soldiers gathered under the roof of the nearest watch-tower to observe our entrance into the harbour, while ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... shaggy brambles, with wild convolvulus and creeping woodbine forcing sweet life through all. Sometimes the banks opened abruptly, leaving patches of green sward, and peeps through still sequestered gates, or over moss-grown pales, into the park or paddock of some rural thane. New villas or old manor-houses on lawny uplands, knitting, as it were, together England's feudal memories with England's freeborn hopes,—the old land ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ditch, climbed half up the mound, and began to cut away at one of the rods, leaning his left arm on the moss-grown stole. The bark was easily cut through, and he soon made a notch, but then the wood seemed to grow harder, and the chips he got out were very small. The harder the wood, the more determined Bevis became, and he cut and worked away with such force that his chest heaved, his brow was ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... any, I should be far from rejecting them," said Planchet; "but possessing only this little cemetery, full of flowers, so moss-grown, shady, and quiet, I am contented with it, and I think of those who live in town, in the Rue des Lombards, for instance, and who have to listen to the rumbling of a couple of thousand vehicles every day, and to the soulless tramp, tramp, tramp ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... secondhand, threadbare; worn, worn to a thread, worn to a shadow, worn to the stump, worn to rags; reduced, reduced to a skeleton; far gone; tacky [U.S.]. decayed &c v.; moth-eaten, worm-eaten; mildewed, rusty, moldy, spotted, seedy, time-worn, moss-grown; discolored; effete, wasted, crumbling, moldering, rotten, cankered, blighted, tainted; depraved &c (vicious) 945; decrepid^, decrepit; broke, busted, broken, out of commission, hors de combat [Fr.], out of action, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... a rather rotten and insecure one, was obtained, and after some difficulty placed against the wall. It would not, however, reach to the windows, as first intended, therefore Walter mounted upon the slippery, moss-grown tiles of a wing of the house, and after a few moments' exploration discovered a skylight which proved to be over the head of the ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... of these roofs, of these spires, of these accidents of numberless edifices, which bent and writhed, and jagged in so eccentric a manner the extreme line of the University, one caught a glimpse, here and there, of a great expanse of moss-grown wall, a thick, round tower, a crenellated city gate, shadowing forth the fortress; it was the wall of Philip Augustus. Beyond, the fields gleamed green; beyond, fled the roads, along which were scattered a few more suburban houses, which became more infrequent as they became more distant. Some of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... kind first disturbed, and then destroyed, their charm. I forgave its dull red brick, and pinched white windows, for the sake of the beloved and cheerful faces within: its ugliness was softened by its age; and its sombre evergreens, and moss-grown stone flower-pots, were relieved by the brilliant hues of a thousand gay and graceful flowers that peeped among them, or ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... and solitary. A robin was perched on the topmost bar of the old wooden gate, singing his joyous carol. As I approached, he hopped from the gate to the low moss-grown wall, and went on singing as I passed him. I was in the humour to apostrophise skylark or donkey, or to be sentimental about anything in creation, just then; so I told my robin what a pretty creature he was, and that I would sooner perish than hurt him by so much as ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... with rather large loose stone—some three feet across at the top. In following a vaguely defined trail through the wood one day in the early spring, a trail at one time evidently considerably used, it led me to this spot. I looked at the stone enclosure, partly moss-grown. I wondered why, although the ground was wet around it, there was no water in or running from what had evidently been at one ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... bears the poor man's fate Might hear Salvation's news. I've walked within the church-yard's walls, With holy dread and fear, And on its marble tablets read "None but the rich lie here." I've wandered till I came upon A heap of moss-grown stones, And some one whispered in mine ear, "Here rest the poor man's bones." My spirit wandered on, until It left the scenes of earth; Until I stood with those who'd passed Through death, the second ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... moss-grown walls of eld And beats some falsehood down Shall pass the pallid gates of death Sans laurel, love ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... small stream, so shallow that the stones at the bottom were plainly to be seen. A loud splash, as the sound of carriage wheels broke the uninterrupted silence, and a commotion in the water gave evidence of the sudden disappearance of several green-backed frogs, sunning themselves on a large, moss-grown rock, projecting above the water's edge; from shady nooks and crevices peeped clusters of early white violets; graceful maidenhair ferns, and hardier members of the fern family, called "Brake," uncurled their graceful, sturdy ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... him, almost as if he were expecting someone; but he had got nearly over a third of the distance down the fig-tree grove before there were the faintest signs of life about him, and there, apparently overcome by the fatigue of his walk, he dropped down upon a moss-grown ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... the endless mazes of the Black Forest wearied us too. The old woman affected this solitary region greatly; here she had trotted round a deserted charcoal-burner's hut; farther on she had torn out the roots that projected from a moss-grown rock; there she had sat at the foot of a tree, and that very recently—not more than two hours since, for the track was quite fresh—and our hope and our ardour rose together. But the daylight ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... the brambles. Examining the place more minutely, he found the bushes curiously divided in the centre. Feeling beneath them, his hand came in contact with cold iron. It was a ring, attached to a circular piece of wood, rusty and moss-grown, so that in appearance there was little to distinguish it from the undergrowth. He found little ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... almost breathless as I approached. The bright moon shining full on the white front of the old house revealed not only its highly decorated style, its fluted pillars and doorway, rich and florid carving, and balustraded summit, but also its stained and moss-grown front. Two giant trees, overthrown at last by the recent storm, lay with their upturned roots, and their yellow foliage still flickering on the sprays that were to bloom no more, where they had fallen, at the right side of the court-yard, which, like the avenue, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... away to a locality less fraught with emotions. In a few moments they entered the park, and the old Hall rose before them. It was a great Tudor house of mullioned windows, traceries, and battlements; of stately towers, moss-grown balustrades, and statues darkening with the fog that was already hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk. A peacock spread its ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the portal; a flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the room doors were open as he had left them, and somehow those open doors frightened him more than anything else. He ran along the corridors, down more stairs, past more open doors and out through the back kitchen, along the moss-grown walk by the brick wall and so round by the three yew trees and the mounting block to the stable-yard. And there was no one there. Neither coachman nor groom nor stable-boys. And there was no one in the stables, or the coach-house, or the ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... distinct and permanent shapes arose;—shapes familiar to his mind, yet forgotten and remembered again, as the fragmentsof a dream; till at length, far, far below him he beheld the great city of the Past, with silent marble streets, and moss-grown walls, and spires uprising with a wave-like, flickering motion. And amid the crowd that thronged those streets, he beheld faces once familiar and dear to him; and heard sorrowful, sweet voices, singing; 'O forget us not! forget us not!' and then the distant, mournful ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... he was far from being a moss-grown reactionary. Everything was not for the best. Despotic bureaucracy... abuses... corruption... and so on. Capable men were wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devoted hearts. But absolute power should be preserved—the tool ready for the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... it belonged to the past and the ghosts of the past. To cross the moat bridge was to step backward from the twentieth century into the seventeenth. The moss-grown moat walls enclosed an old-world garden, most jealously guarded by high yew hedges trimmed into fantastic shapes of birds and animals; a garden of parterres and lawns, where tritons blew stone horns, and naked nymphs bathed in marble fountains; with ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... wind here; the spring has not begun properly yet, but we go about without our goloshes and fur caps. The tulips will soon be out. I have a nice garden but it is untidy, moss-grown—a dilettante garden. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... let slip an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the newspapers; he had his press-agents; he took good care that his name shouldn't be forgotten. But apart from that? Alas, a few novels in the style of the seventies, a popular and amateurish criticism of such a moss-grown dogma as the Atonement! What did it amount to when one looked at it critically? But the fact that he had the press behind him made his words carry weight. Yes, he was certainly a shrewd and thrifty soul, a real backwoods bargain-hunter. He knew what he was doing when he even allowed his ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... enough," thought I, "for this morning's proceedings will have been cabled to New York ere now, and read at the breakfast-tables of every old, moss-grown naturalist in America before I see the Countess d'Alzette this evening." And I drew from my pocket the roll of paper which she had given me, and, lighting a cigar, lay back in ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... thought of a bit of landscape at home. A young forest of silver beeches growing straight and fine as the threads on a loom; and through the gray perspective of their satin-smooth trunks you caught the white gleam of a fairy cascade as it tumbled over the moss-grown stones to the brook below. It was like a bit from a Japanese ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... rose I gazed over the wild and flowering things, and saw the corner of the old moss-grown wall that enclosed the garden. That wall was destined to be at a later time a very familiar haunt of mine, for on the Thursday holidays during my college life I spent many a happy hour sitting upon it contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and there I mused, to the chirping accompaniment ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... here and there, and finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac—his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty-five per cent of this would reach its destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... and though the moon as yet was only faintly yellow, every arch and cloister was clearly visible. Paul gazed down at them, as he had done all his life, with reverent eyes. There was something almost awesome in the graceful yet bold outline, and in the great age of those rugged, moss-grown pillars and arches, so ecclesiastical in their shape and suggestiveness,—as indeed they might well be, for they were practically the ruins of the old monastery chapel. But, as he looked, the expression in his eyes suddenly changed. A dark figure ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... trees were like the birds, they scarcely needed ears. And so by the high road of evolution you arrive at man and the enigma of his ear. It is a shrunken and shrivelled remnant, a moss-grown ruin, a derelict ship. It is to a pattern ear what the old shoe which you find in a country lane, shed from the foot of some "unemployed," is to one of Waukenphast's "five-miles-an-hour-easy" boots. We ought to temper our contempt for what it is with respect for what it was. All the parts ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... suits. A dream of a dress that would be, with all the shades of Madame Abel cunningly blended. A honeymoon lasts at least a month. The roses would all be out at Long Barton by the time they walked up that moss-grown drive, and stood at the Rectory door, and she murmured in the ear of the Reverend Cecil: "Aren't ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... Long Island Sound and up Buzzards Bay met the Plymouth men yearly and held a most decorous carnival of barter. Tradition has it that the Plymouth men made the trip by sea to the nearest point on the Bay shore. I do not know if the meeting place is known, but I know a moss-grown and gnarled red cedar on the margin of Buttermilk Bay, as we now call it, which I am sure was growing there when the first swapping of commodities took place and in the shade of whose branches the grave and sturdy traders ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... justify their ecstatic remarks. A grassy courtyard, interspersed with box-edged flower beds and flagged footpaths, led to a large, gray old Tudor house, whose mullioned diamond-paned windows, twisted chimney stacks, irregular moss-grown roof, ivied bell-tower, stone balls and carved porch offered the very utmost of the romantic and picturesque. The change from the humdrum, ordinary surroundings of their former school was supreme. Miss Beasley ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... foot of a perpendicular wall of moss-grown rock, and set the example, after disturbing the grass and ferns at the foot, of sitting down, and Ned lay ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... every other place in England, contains the remains of religious houses. There was a priory at Ulverscroft, not far from Bradgate, and some picturesque moss-grown remains still exist, said to be the finest ruin in Leicestershire. Grace Dieu Abbey was also in the forest, and on the dissolution of the monasteries was granted to the Beaumonts; the ruins of this abbey were much frequented ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... had a hoarse rusty sound, as if it had not been rung very often of late; and after he had waited for some minutes, and rung a second time, a countrified-looking woman emerged from the house, and came slowly along the wide moss-grown gravel-walk towards him. She stared at him with the broad open stare of rusticity, and did not make any attempt to open the gate, but stood with a great key in her hand, waiting for Gilbert ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... most charming self. The American whispered to her that a picnic without her would be a desolation and he had half a mind to stop another week at his aunt's—but Gertrude was not enjoying herself. From behind the gorse bushes, from between the moss-grown boulders, from beneath the dark foliage of the Scotch firs, there peeped ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh

... about the church, some lying flat on the ground, others elevated on low pillars, or on cross slabs of stone, and almost all looking dark, moss-grown, and very antique. But on reading some of the inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent; for, in fact, twenty years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... silence and, best boon of all, an unexpected solitude—a solitude that invested the white building with a glamour of unreality and converted the slight-stemmed, moss-grown trees ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... insomuch that each member of the family, including servants, has a separate suite of apartments, and there are vast wildernesses of upper rooms into which we have never yet sent exploring expeditions. At one end of the house there is a moss-grown tower, haunted by owls and by the ghost of a monk who was confined there in the thirteenth century, previous to being burnt at the stake in the principal square of Florence. I hire this villa, tower ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... joints"; and undoubtedly a source of great pride to builders and congregation. No trace of it at present remains, save the old graveyard at the side, "an irregular lot, sparsely covered with ancient moss-grown stones, in all positions, straggling, broken and neglected, and overrun with tall grass and weeds." But in May, as the writer stood within the crumbling wall, the ground was thick with violets and "innocents," the grass sprung green and soft and thick, and the blue sky bent over it, as full ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... kind of idea that English girls were just a mite moss-grown. Old-fashioned and sweet, you know, but scared to move round without a footman or a maiden aunt. I guess I'm a bit behind ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... began that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, she stopped with a sob beside an old scarred milestone by the wayside. 'This—is as far as I can go,' she said. She stooped, and laid her hand on the cold moss-grown surface of the stone. 'Even now it's wet with dew.' She rose again and looked strangely into his face. 'Yes, yes, here it is,' she said, 'oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But nothing now can trouble you again of that. We're both at ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... mind was disordered. It was the dog of Diogenes, to whom God had accorded solitude in this tub, hollowed out of a very tree itself. With indifference he watched the dogs with the spiked collars pass by. Then to their great astonishment he left his moss-grown kennel for a moment, and, since his leash had become undone, tied himself fast again using his mouth as aid. He reentered his ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... dresses were old rags." This is an Irish picture; but in the north of England it is much the same. Instead of a neat cottage the midwife perceives the large overhanging branches of an ancient oak, whose hollow and moss-grown trunk she had before mistaken for the fireplace, where glow-worms supplied the place of lamps. And in North Wales, when Mrs. Gamp incautiously rubbed an itching eye with the finger she had used to rub the baby's eyes, "then she saw with that eye that the wife lay on a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... struggled vigorously he knew that the chances were that he would tear the rotten moss-grown stubb up by the roots; if he swung about too much the branches would give way at their intersection with the low stem; if he should force his feet into the crumbling sides he would only kick down more stones and soil, and undermine ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn

... covered him, rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over his trail as if he heard footsteps behind him. Then another nervous dash, a squeak which proclaims at once his escape, and his arrival, and he vanishes under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... or two roofless and moss-grown cottages, I entered the narrow and rambling street which leads through the town. This street a short distance down widens a little, as if to afford the wayfarer space to observe a remarkable old house that stands on the northern side. The ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... moss-grown wall, and stood, gazing expectantly down the dark, disused roadway; then, after a moment's hesitation, perceiving nobody, seated himself beneath the wall, on ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... village not far off behind the woods, Billerica, settled not long ago, and the children still bear the names of the first settlers in this late "howling wilderness"; yet to all intents and purposes it is as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old gray town where men grow old and sleep already under moss-grown monuments,—outgrow their usefulness. This is ancient Billerica, (Villarica?) now in its dotage, named from the English Billericay, and whose Indian name was Shawshine. I never heard that it was young. See, is not nature here gone to decay, farms all run out, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... The possibility of plunging boldly into the thicket and pushing his way through to the other side had never occurred to him, although it is doubtful if he would have dared to do so even had he thought of it. He ran down the dry bed of the stream, and past the silent moss-grown wheel, breathing a sigh of relief when he came out into an ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston

... this was one which the man is not likely to forget who has once heard it,—whether beneath his foot, as he steps upon the moss-grown log in the rank cedar-swamp, or under his hand, when about to grasp with it a ledge of the rocks among which he is clambering, unknowing of the serpent's dens. With clenched teeth, and hair that rustled like the sedge-grass, I rose and woke up the obedient gas, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... quarter of the eighteenth century ideas of revolution were widely in the air. The people were rising against the tyranny of the kings. First in this struggle for liberty came the English colonies in America. Then the people of France sprang to arms and overthrew the moss-grown tyranny of feudal times. The armies of Napoleon spread the demand for freedom through Europe. In Spain the people began to fight for their freedom, and soon the thirst for liberty crossed the ocean to America, where the people of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... from the ice-cold well at the back of the cottage. Morning and night I serve with the Gibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no doubt it was theirs when their hearts were purged by service. Morning and night I send down the moss-grown bucket with its urgent message from a dry and dusty world; the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid treasure responds to the messenger, and then with creak and jangle—the welcome of labouring earth—the bucket slowly nears the top and disperses the treasure in ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... of land at the crossing of three roads, its spacious front, rude and unpainted as it was, presented every appearance of an inn, but from its moss-grown chimneys no smoke arose, nor could I detect any sign of life in its shutterless windows and closed doors, across which shivered the dark shadow of the one gaunt and aged pine, that stood like a guard ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... Mariano," said the former. "To the right, amongst the trees, you will find an old moss-grown bench, upon which I have often sat in happier days than these. There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... capitally. It sounds well here. I wonder if those in there like it?'—and the stage coach vanished. Then two young fellows came gallopping up on horseback. There's youth and spirit in the blood here! thought I; and, indeed, they looked with a smile at the moss-grown hill and thick forest. 'I should not dislike a walk here with the miller's Christine,' ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... Oxford, with the moss-grown, ivy-covered walls, with all the poetry of conservatism, fascinated me by its dignity and its country freshness; there the flower of the English nature was expressed in buildings and trees. The antiquated and non-popular instruction, however, repelled me. And ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... sculptor, "but wiser, it may be, than I can fathom. Really, however, the idea does strike one as delightfully fresh, when we consider Donatello's position and external environment. Why, my dear Hilda, he is a Tuscan born, of an old noble race in that part of Italy; and he has a moss-grown tower among the Apennines, where he and his forefathers have dwelt, under their own vines and fig-trees, from an unknown antiquity. His boyish passion for Miriam has introduced him familiarly to our little circle; and our republican and artistic simplicity ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... among the moss-grown stones, which bore almost undecipherable inscriptions, she wondered if those they covered had led happy, contented lives, or if they were afflicted with unquiet thoughts, unsatisfied longings, and dull despair, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... pretension, the manor or, as it is called in Hungary, "the castle" of Herr von Abonyi. It was really a very ordinary structure, only it had a second story, stood on an artificial mound, to which on both sides there was a very gentle ascent, and above the ever open door was a moss-grown escutcheon, grey with age, on which a horseman, with brandished sword, could be discerned in vague outlines, worn by time ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... right under an archway from the damp, moss-grown court over which the tower throws a perpetual shadow, a broad staircase, closed by a door of open ironwork, leads to the first story (the piano nobile). Here an anteroom, with Etruscan urns and fragments of mediaeval sculpture let into the walls, gives access to a great sala, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... downwards. Their tail is broad. Their nests, about an inch in diameter, and as much in breadth, are very compactly formed, the outer coat of grey lichen, and lined with the fine down plucked from the stalks of the fern and other herbs, and are fixed to the side of a branch or the moss-grown side of a tree so artificially, that they appear, when viewed from below, mere mossy knots, or accidental protuberances. They are bold and pugnacious, two males seldom meeting on the same bush or flower without a battle; ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown

... of pomp and power, To find the calm retreat; Loathing he leaves the velvet couch, To seek the moss-grown seat. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the long ago wandered my thoughts: to the moss-grown beech in which I cut my name and that of a little girl with yellow curls, of blessed memory, with the first jack-knife I ever owned; to the story-book with the little fir tree that pined because it was small, and because the hare jumped over ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... should the final disposition of Fiume prove unacceptable to the Jugoslavs, they will almost certainly divert the trade of the interior to some Slav port, leaving Fiume to drowse in idleness beside her moss-grown wharfs and crumbling warehouses, dreaming dreams of ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... edge of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine, Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom, Denys, the priest, hath told me 'twas the lord Apollo's shrine In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin's womb. I never go past but I doff my cap ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... around which the trees nestle for shelter from the winter storms—the ruined castles with empty "magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn"—own it still for their pleasure, moss-grown with history as vivid as the lichens on its ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... Malise, speed! The lake is past, Duncraggan's huts appear at last, And peep, like moss-grown rocks, half seen Half hidden in the copse so green; There mayst thou rest, thy labor done, Their lord shall speed the signal on.— As stoops the hawk upon his prey, The henchman shot him down the way. What woful accents ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... always looking for the Celtic note in him, and not to recognize his Greek note when it comes. But if one attends well to the difference between the two notes, and bears in mind, to guide one, such things as Virgil's "moss-grown springs and ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... as burn Trinacrian embers, 55 Burn near Thermopylae's Oeta the fiery springs. Sad, these piteous eyes did waste all wearily weeping, (55) Sad, these cheeks did rain ceaseless a showery woe. Wakeful, as hill-born brook, which, afar off silvery gleaming, O'er his moss-grown crags leaps with a tumble adown; 60 Brook which awhile headlong o'er steep and valley descending, Crosses anon wide ways populous, hastes to the street; (60) Cheerer in heats o' the sun to the wanderer heavily fuming, Under a drought, when fields ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus



Words linked to "Moss-grown" :   fogyish, covered, unfashionable, unstylish



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