"Osier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mattresses and thick blankets, Phil, nothing to complain of at all—I'll be watching her growing up, year by year, same as if she was under my eye constant. 'She's in pinafores now' thinks I. 'Now she's in long frocks, and is doing up her hair.' 'She's as straight as an osier now, and red as a rose, and the best looking girl in the island, and the spitting picture of what her mother used to be.' Aw, I'll be seeing her in my mind's eye, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... of our modern travellers. ROME is the great object of our pilgrimage: and 1st, the journey; 2d, the residence; and 3d, the return; will form the most proper and perspicuous division. 1. I climbed Mount Cenis, and descended into the plain of Piedmont, not on the back of an elephant, but on a light osier seat, in the hands of the dextrous and intrepid chairmen of the Alps. The architecture and government of Turin presented the same aspect of tame and tiresome uniformity: but the court was regulated with decent and splendid oeconomy; and I was introduced to his Sardinian majesty Charles Emanuel, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... less injuriously in the case of pasture-land than in the highly-developed culture of the vine and olive. On an arable estate, according to Cato, the returns of the soil stood as follows in a descending series:—1, vineyard; 2, vegetable garden; 3, osier copse, which yielded a large return in consequence of the culture of the vine; 4, olive plantation; 5, meadow yielding hay; 6, corn fields; 7, copse; 8, wood for felling; 9, oak forest for forage to the cattle; all of which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... there's enow To fill life's dusty way; And who will miss a poet's feet, Or wonder where he stray: So to the woods and wastes I'll go, And I will build an osier bower, And sweetly there to me shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... milk, and, didst thou not fly me, more beauteous than a watered garden. {And yet} thou, the same Galatea, {art} wilder than the untamed bullocks, harder than the aged oak, more unstable than the waters, tougher than both the twigs of osier and than the white vines, more immoveable than these rocks, more violent than the torrent, prouder than the bepraised peacock, fiercer than the fire, rougher than the thistles, more cruel than the pregnant she-bear, more deaf ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions when they ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... cycloid. The elastic curve is a curve which bends or curves exactly in proportion to its distance from a given straight line. According to the canon, therefore, this curve should be beautiful; and it is acknowledged to be so in the examples given by the bending osier and the waving grain,—also by the few who have seen full drawings of all the forms. And the mathematician finds in it a new beauty, from its marvellous correspondence with the motions of a pendulum,—the algebraic expression of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon track goes up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk adheres to the shoes like mortar, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... a sort of gamebag made of osier which she had on her arm, all the while cursing du Bousquier for his stinginess; for one thousand francs was the sum she wanted. Once tempted of the devil to desire that sum, a girl will go far when she has set foot on the path of trickery. As she made her way along the rue du Bercail, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... out his snowy plumage to the gale; And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier Isle, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... them forth; the horses were quietly saddled and bridled. No watch was kept; who could dread a foe at such a time and season? She opened the gateway in an outer defence of osier work and ditch which encompassed the ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... easy for those poor creatures to leave their homes, their working places! Some of them have been there thirty years. They are close to the two or three farms that employ them, close to the osier beds which give them extra earnings in the spring. If they were turned out there is nothing nearer than Murewell, and not a single cottage to be found there. I don't say it is a landlord's duty to provide more cottages than are wanted; but if the labour is ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... two portions, about eighty yards apart, being inhabited by two distinct bands. The whole extended about three quarters of a mile along the river bank, and was composed of conical lodges, that looked like so many small hillocks, being wooden frames intertwined with osier, and covered with earth. The plain beyond the village swept up into hills of considerable height, but the whole country ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... done I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great length every way, as full with stakes or sticks of the osier- like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... lay down on beds of rushes; and Goldilocks, soothed by the lullaby, fell asleep; but soon awoke, and saw her brother leaning, on tiptoe, over the osier basket. The baby's face looked, in the moonlight, white and pinched; and its sick hands were pressed together ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... after a period of very stormy wet weather, I saw a great migration of swallows down the Thames. It was a dark, dripping evening, and the thick osier bed on Chiswick Eyot was covered with wet leaf. Between five and six o'clock immense flights of swallows and martins suddenly appeared above the eyot, arriving, not in hundreds, but in thousands and tens of thousands. The air was thick ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... thought so too, and grew the warmer at being unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and lambs in the whole world. But every night this shepherd used to pen them up in a fold. Do you know what a sheepfold is? Well, I will tell you. It is a place like the court; but instead of pales there are hurdles, which are made of sticks that will bend, such as osier twigs; and they are twisted and made very fast, so that nothing can creep in, and nothing can get out. Well, and so every night, when it grew dark and cold, the shepherd called all his flock, sheep and lambs, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... Easterne Cloudes with streaks of light: And fleckled darknesse like a drunkard reeles, From forth daies path, and Titans burning wheeles: Now ere the Sun aduance his burning eye, The day to cheere, and nights danke dew to dry, I must vpfill this Osier Cage of ours, With balefull weedes, and precious Iuiced flowers, The earth that's Natures mother, is her Tombe, What is her burying graue that is her wombe: And from her wombe children of diuers ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Zeus for that this once the giant had driven the rams with the other sheep into the cave. For, these being great and strong, I fastened my comrades under the bellies of the beasts, tying them with osier twigs, of which the giant made his bed. One ram I took, and fastened a man beneath it, and two rams I set, one on either side. So I did with the six, for but six were left out of the twelve who had ventured with me from the ship. And there was one mighty ram far larger than all the others, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... osier grove! Wake, trembling, stainless, virgin dove! Wake, nestling of a parent's love! Let Moran see thine eyes. Shule, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... Commune, and houses and haystacks were burned.... At LOMME every one was forced to work: the Saxon Kdnt. Schoper announced that all women who did not obey within 24 hours would be interned: all the women obeyed. They were employed in the making of osier-revetement two metres high for the trenches. The men were forced to put up barbed wire near Fort Denglas, two kltrs. from the front. A few days after the evacuation of ENNETIERES the Uhlans shot a youth, Jean Leclercq, age 17, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... claimed for drainage with reference to the above-named staple crops, will apply with equal, if not greater force, to all garden and orchard culture. In fact, with the exception of osier willows, and cranberries, there is scarcely a cultivated plant which will not yield larger and better crops on drained than on undrained land,—enough better, and enough larger, to pay much more than the interest on the ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... The RED-OSIER CORNEL or DOGWOOD (C. stolonifera), which has spread, with the help of running shoots, through the soft soil of its moist retreats, over the British Possessions north of us and throughout the United States from ocean to ocean, except ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... fowls and eggs. No sooner did a hen cackle, but he resorted to the nest, and, with his lead-pencil, wrote the day of the month upon the egg. The lady rung her table-bell, and called him to her, telling him to bring his egg-basket. He brought in an openwork, red osier basket, with a dozen and a half of eggs in it, laid on cotton batting, each egg as duly inscribed as the specimens of a mineralogist. Ralph ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... night, Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light; And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels: Non, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb; What is her burying gave, that is her womb: And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find; ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... ear is so attuned to metric harmony that she must have been born within sound of some osier-fringed brook leaping and hurrying over its pebbly bed. There is a variety of subject and treatment, sufficient for all tastes, and these are poems which ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the winding of the river Ouse. Far on every side stretches a homely landscape, tilth and pasture, hedgerow and clustered trees, to where the sky rests upon the gentle hills. Slow, silent, the river lapses between its daisied banks, its grey-green osier beds. Yonder is the little town of St. Neots. In all England no simpler bit of rural scenery; in all the world nothing of its kind more beautiful. Cattle are lowing amid the rich meadows. Here one may loiter and dream in utter restfulness, whilst ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... myrtles, and now vernal flow'rs, And hearing, as I lay at ease along, Your swains contending for the prize of song! I also dared attempt (and, as it seems Not much displeas'd attempting) various themes, For even I can presents boast from you, The shepherd's pipe and osier basket too, And Dati and Francini both have made My name familiar to the beechen shade, 190 And they are learn'd, and each in ev'ry place Renown'd for song, and both of Lydian Race. Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all now due to other ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... bank, Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank, My sliding Chariot stayes, Thick set with Agat, and the azurn sheen Of Turkis blew, and Emrauld green That in the channell strayes, Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O're the Cowslips Velvet head, That bends not as I tread, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... taking the lead; and we all filed after him through the open forest, moving rapidly, almost on a run, for half a mile, then swung sharply out to the right, where the trees grew slimmer and thinner, and plunged into a thicket of hazel and osier. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... carts for carrying the money of the expedition. The whole of this capital amounted to about one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of hundreds of thousands of the copper coins of the country, made with holes in their centres and strung by the thousand upon osier twigs. This is the only money which circulates in the agricultural portions of China, and a "barbarian" has to give a pound weight of them for a couple of eggs. The country soon began to become hilly, with the mountains of Mongolia visible in the distance. Trains of camels were passed, or could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Hollow its voice, and moss its spreading beard; Whose fate-lopp'd brow, the bat's and beetle's dome, Shook, as the hunted owl flew hooting home. His breast was bronzed by many an eastern blast, And fourscore winters seem'd he to have past; His thread-bare coat the supple osier bound, And with slow feet he press'd the sodden ground, Where, as he heard the wild-wing'd Eurus blow, He shook, from locks as white, December's snow; Inured to storm, his soul ne'er bid it cease, But lock'd ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... circle, filled our water-kettle, and put on our meat to cook. Our next care had been to arrange our sleeping places. For this purpose we cut a quantity of willows which grew on the banks of the stream hard by, and we each formed a semi-circular hut, by sticking the extremities of the osier twigs into the ground, and bending them over so as to form a succession of arches. These were further secured by weaving a few flexible twigs along the top and sides of the framework, thus giving it sufficient stability to support the saddle-cloths and skins with which ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... little osier baskets, laden with yellow and purple clusters, Casimer offered them, with a charming mixture of timidity and grace, to the girls, saying, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... be no harm to make just one, now you've spoken of it," said Theodora. So the knife being opened, I was instructed how to cut a stick of green osier, or maple, shape the end, cut and loosen the bark; and having slipped the bark off, how further to make the requisite notches, so that the hollow cylinder of bark being replaced, there would be a whistle of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... of shapely stone, By foliaged tracery combined; Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand, Twixt poplars straight, the osier wand, In many a freakish knot, had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... shuddering cheek, 130 And with his blue swoln face before her stand, And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak: "Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue, At dawn or dusk, industrious as before; Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew, 135 While I lie weltering on the osier'd shore, Drown'd by the Kelpie's[47] wrath, nor e'er ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... consonant not call'd ev, with a different caracter, is no less absur'd than j consonant, not call'd ij, with a different figure, as mejer for measure, as the French also use it, as je vou remercy. So osier, [h]osier, easier, azure, &c. ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... to interfere to put a stop to the proceedings, by the capture of the ringleader of the party, from whose advice to his followers the most serious consequences were likely to ensue. At 12 o'clock, they assembled at a place called the Osier Bed, where every means were resorted to, to quell the disturbance, but without success. Sir William defied interruption to his men, and fired on the Rev. William Handley, of Herne Hill, who, with his brother, was assisting to take him into custody. They then made their way to Bossenden Wood, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... structure was in progress, they made a breach in the old wall, and carted away the earth from the bottom of the mound. To prevent this, the Peloponnesians filled up the space thus caused with heavy masses of clay, rammed tightly into baskets of osier, which made a solid structure, much harder to remove than the loose earth. Then the Plataeans had recourse to another device: marking carefully the position of the mound, they ran a mine from the city under it, and as fast as the earth fell in, they carried it away. This continued for a long time, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... of the marsh and halted for a moment. In front of us lay a dark pool, still as death and fringed with long grass and osier beds. A mournful breeze blew across the place, raising a (p. 134) plaintive croon, half of resignation and half of protest from the osiers and grasses as it passed. A little distance away the skeleton ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... have great plenty of them about Bemarton, &c. near Salisbury, where the osier beds doe yield four pounds per ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... baguette D'osier vert ou de romarin Il fait un piege, et puis il guette Les petits oiseaux en goguette ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... day in the grease-laden atmosphere of the cavern, Kraken plaited a deformed skeleton out of osier rods and covered it with bristling, scaly, and filthy skins. To one extremity of the skeleton Orberosia sewed the fierce crest and the hideous mask that Kraken used to wear in his plundering expeditions, and to the other end she fastened the tail with twisted folds which the hero was ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... not too long among shining glaciers, for the cold may come upon you suddenly in that bright sunshine, and steal your life away. And tread lightly along the mountain paths, for often the slightest motion will bring down an avalanche. And, my child, take with you this osier basket, in which lies a little loaf of bread. Fear not to eat of it every day; but remember always to leave a crumb, lest you should meet a hungry bird, and have nothing to give it. And thus will the loaf be always renewed. Do not forget, and a blessing ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... of the house, looking radiant as the morning itself,—her luxuriant hair was thrown back over her shoulders, and fell loosely about her in thick curls, simply confined by a knot of blue ribbon. She carried a large osier basket, capacious, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to be ashamed. averiguar to investigate, find out. avio preparation, provision, apparatus. avisado sagacious. avisar to inform, notify. ay alas! ayer yesterday. ayuda aid, help. ayudar to aid. ayuno fast, abstinence. ayuntamiento town council. azafate m. flat (osier) basket. azotea platform on roof. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... the corn-crake, the land-rail. Crambo-clink, rhyme. Crambo-jingle, rhyming. Cran, the support for a pot or kettle. Crankous, fretful. Cranks, creakings. Cranreuch, hoar-frost. Crap, crop, top. Craw, crow. Creel, an osier basket. Creepie-chair, stool of repentance. Creeshie, greasy. Crocks, old ewes. Cronie, intimate friend. Crooded, cooed. Croods, coos. Croon, moan, low. Croon, to toll. Crooning, humming. Croose, crouse, cocksure, set, proud, cheerful. Crouchie, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... (Staffordshire being one) of all the otters, and the number captured and killed in the last few years was mentioned. "Good otter-hounds," as an old writer observes, "will come chanting, and trail along by the river-side, and will beat every tree-root, every osier-bed, and tuft of bulrushes; nay, sometimes they will take the water and beat it like a spaniel, and by these means the otter can hardly escape you." The otter swims and dives with great celerity, and in doing the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands, and raised to the level of her face, an open basket of wicker. It was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms. At the sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent. Then, at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the young, greeted his quiet gaze, his heart was at once won over to the side of the rival. Will Somers was seated by the hearth, on which a few live embers despite the warmth of the summer evening still burned; a rude little table was by his side, on which were laid osier twigs and white peeled chips, together with an open book. His hands, pale and slender, were at work on a small basket half finished. His mother was just clearing away the tea-things from another table that stood by the window. Will rose, with the good breeding that belongs to the rural ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at Christmas children used to go singing through the village streets, carrying a lantern of coloured paper on a long osier rod.{49} At Pleudihen in Brittany three young men representing the Magi sang carols in the cottages, dressed in their holiday ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... stray Boche, or encountering a Boche patrol. In front of Essarts the lines were so far apart that there was plenty of room for a small pitched battle, and night after night Lieuts. Pearson, Creed, Poynor, and others visited such familiar haunts as the "Osier Bed," "Thistle Patch," "Lonely Tree," and other well-known places. The first to meet the enemy was Lieut. Pearson, who came upon a small party in the "Thistle Patch," who made off rapidly back to their lines. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... White, writing on Nov. 4, 1767, after mentioning that he had seen swallows roosting in osier-beds by the river, says:—'This seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.' White's Selborne, Letter xii. See also post, May ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill |
