"Osier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even from that distance so evidently sickly, that they looked like orphan fruit-trees that were being brought up in a Poor Law orchard. Among them stood two or three raw-boned bungalows painted those colours which are liked by plumbers. But the floor of the valley was an osier-bed, and the burst of sunshine had set alight the coarse orange hair of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... vices displayed themselves, at ease, as his limbs in a bath. He felt himself so powerless against her, that he never essayed to struggle. She possessed him. Once or twice he attempted to firmly oppose her ruinous caprices; but she had made him pliable as the osier. Under the dark glances of this girl, his strongest resolutions melted more quickly than snow beneath an April sun. She tortured him; but she had also the power to make him forget all by a smile, a tear, or a kiss. Away from the enchantress, reason returned at intervals, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Here weeping willows trailed their weeds of daintiest green; here vigorous chestnut buds threw out their strong scent; here osier-beds were a living tangle of gold and crimson reflected brokenly in the lake where frogs made merry, the frogs being about the only wild animals left in the Stromovka. Things were very different in this ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... rushy-fringed 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, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... immediately after his uncle's death, while every terrace-walk and flowering alley spoke of the poet's loving care. He tells of the "tall ash-tree, in which a thrush has sung, for hours together, during many years;" of the "laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung;" of the stone steps "in the interstices of which grow the yellow flowering poppy, and the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Ralph was a great amateur in 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. ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... festooned with feathery snow. Those long creeping lines on which the crystals sparkle are only brambles, and that big rosette of rusty red and fluffy white is the New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost particles, is the downy ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... sachems rose, casting off their black-and-white blankets, and each in turn planted branches of yellow willow, green willow, red osier, samphire, witch-hazel, spice-bush, and silver birch along the edge of the silent ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... toward the sky, come down again, scarcely so much from a doubt of their merits, as through affection to their native land. In summer they hang like a permanent shower of green to refresh the bright water; and in winter, like loose osier-work, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the left and on higher ground lay St. Amand, with its outlying hamlets. All was bathed in the shimmering, sultry heat of midsummer, the harbinger, as it proved, of a violent thunderstorm. The Prussian position was really stronger than it seemed. Napoleon could not fully see either the osier beds that fringed the Ligny brook, or its steep banks, or the many strong buildings of Ligny itself. He saw the Prussians on the slope behind the village, and was at first puzzled by their exposed position. "The old fox keeps to earth," he was heard to mutter. And so he waited until matters ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... trumpets sounded and forthwith armour was buckled on, horses saddled, while everywhere was stir and bustle of departure, what time, within his osier hut, my Beltane was busily doing on his armour, and, being in haste, making slow business of it; thrice he essayed to buckle a certain strap and thrice it escaped him, when lo! came a slim white hand ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... 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, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... people could read, and fewer still could write. They knew nothing but what their priests and politicians told them to believe. They went to their beds with the poultry, and rose as the cock crew: they went to mass, as their ducks to the osier and weed ponds; and to the conscription as their lambs to the slaughter. They understood that there was a world beyond them, but they remembered it only as the best market for their fruit, their fowls, their lace, their skins. Their brains were as dim as were their oil-lit ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... 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
... in which they range: the green, sappy stem, the dew-bead that hung on it, the shape of a ripple were the same now as when Nineveh was a queen of civilization and men's flesh was reddening alive in osier cages over altar fires on Wiltshire downs. And all the sweetness, all the romance of an English midsummer night seized the heart of Lawrence, a nomad, a returned exile, and a man in love—as if he had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... knew the whole country-side, did not know this miracle of beauty. The child, who was half naked, wore a forlorn little petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in alternate strips of brown and white, full of holes and very ragged. A sheet of rough writing paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her for a hat. Beneath this paper—covered with pot-hooks and round O's, from which it derived the name of "schoolpaper"—the loveliest mass of blonde hair that ever a daughter of Eve could have desired, was twisted up, and held in place by a species of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... feast down in the city, Philotherus, but in the country, delighting myself with the breath of the west wind; sufficient couch for me is a strewing of boughs under my side, for at hand is a bed of native willow and osier, the ancient garland of the Carians; but let wine be brought, and the delightful lyre of the Muses, that drinking at our will we may sing the renowned bride of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... said there was not a sound; but there was, and Ian's ear was attuned to catch it. The immense inarticulate whisper of night came to him. It came to him from the deserted parks, from the distant Cherwell flowing through its willow-roots and osier-islands, from the flat meadow-country beyond, stretching away to the coppices of the low boundary hills. It was a voice made up of many whispers, each imperceptible, or almost imperceptible in itself; whisper of water and dry reeds, of broken twigs and dry leaves fluttering to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... those who never have seen the interior of a hive can form an adequate conception of the arrangement and aspect of the combs. Let them imagine—we will take a peasant's hive, where the bee is left entirely to its own resources—let them imagine a dome of straw or osier, divided from top to bottom by five, six, eight, sometimes ten, strips of wax, resembling somewhat great slices of bread, that run in strictly parallel lines from the top of the dome to the floor, espousing ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... peacefully. There were trees everywhere—beech and laburnum and larch, horsechestnut and lime and poplar, as far as the eye could reach, and the latter, standing straight up in the barer spots, were a notable feature in the landscape, as were also the alder-cars and occasional osier beds dotted ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... sparkling manner, until they stopped to dine in some ever- lastingly-green garden, needing no matter-of-fact identification here; and then the tide obligingly turned—being devoted to that party alone for that day; and as they floated idly among some osier-beds, Rosa tried what she could do in the rowing way, and came off splendidly, being much assisted; and Mr. Grewgious tried what he could do, and came off on his back, doubled up with an oar under ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... Millau I strolled into the little square where the great crucifix stands. I found it densely crowded. Three or four hundred men were there, each wearing a blouse and carrying a sickle with a bit of osier laid upon the sharp edge of the blade along its whole length, and firmly tied. All these harvesters were waiting to be hired for the following week. They belonged to a class much less numerous in France than in England—the agricultural labourers who have no direct interest in the soil that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the other ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... his cunning, and had no care of his craft. Vermilion-finned and with eyes of bossy gold, the tunnies went by in shoals, but he heeded them not. His spear lay by his side unused, and his baskets of plaited osier were empty. With lips parted, and eyes dim with wonder, he sat idle in his boat and listened, listening till the sea-mists crept round him, and the wandering moon stained his brown limbs ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... visiting with Mister Tom Squirrel. He was afraid that he would lose one of his children. But at last the baby robins were tired enough to feel like resting. Little Sheldon was in the top of a cedar tree, Elizabeth was sitting in a green osier, and little Evelina was sitting on Mister Chipmunk's stump, but poor little Montgomery was still under the heavy nest, and neither Robert Robin nor Mrs. Robin could think of any way to ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... necessary, and Bob softly let himself down from the bank till his feet were level with the water, then taking hold of a stout osier above his head he bent it down, and then dropped slowly into the water, which came nearly to ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... were found insufficient for the woeful task. He yelled, and flung them aside like children, but made no attempt at escape, for, in truth, he knew not what he did. The sheriff, one of the most powerful and athletic men to be found in the province, was turned about and bent like an osier in his hands. His words, when the fury of despair permitted his wild and broken cries to become intelligible, were now for life—only life upon any terms; and again did he howl out his horrors of death, hell, and judgment. Never was such a scene, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 nine elements enter into ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... passed rapidly alongside the raft sweeping the frothing water from under her paddle wheels. The planks tossed up and down in the wash, and the osier branches fastening them together, groaned and scraped with ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... 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 was nearly destitute of trees. While they were regarding the village, they beheld a singular fleet coming down the river. It ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... 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, son of the gardener of Count D'Hespel, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... as metal in the streaming noon light. Tinkle of a donkey-bell below me, then at the turn of a path the donkey's hindquarters, mauve-grey, neatly clipped in a pattern of diamonds and lozenges, and a tail meditatively swishing as he picked his way among the stones, the head as yet hidden by the osier baskets of the pack. At the next turn I skipped ahead of the donkey and walked with the arriero, a dark boy in tight blue pants and short grey tunic cut to the waist, who had the strong cheek-bones, hawk nose and slender hips of an Arab, who spoke an aspirated ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... be giving himself any extra worry on account of this thing. On Sunday afternoon he sat huddled together in a big, fluffy osier-bush, down by the lake, and blew on a reed-pipe. All around him there sat as many finches and bullfinches and starlings as the bush could well hold—who sang songs which he tried to teach himself to play. But the boy was not at home in this art. He blew so false that the feathers ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... those boats which are called balsas or by swimming or in any other way. Twenty days the camp was here in order to mend the bridge, for the officers [maestros] had much to do, because the water was high and kept breaking down the osier ropes which were put in place. And if the cacique had not had so great a number of men to build the bridge and to cross over by it and pull over the ropes of osiers, it would not have been possible to build it. But having twenty-four thousand warriors, and ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... an old 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, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... caught by that palpable device. But casting about in his mind all the ways which he could contrive for escape (no less than all their lives depending on the success), at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots of the osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly slept, with which he tied the fattest and fleeciest of the rams together, three in a rank, and under the belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last, wrapping himself fast with both his hands in the rich wool of one, the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... friend must be more than apparent to any one. They had reached the edge of the ice now, and Sylvia's hands were still in Jerry's, although they were not skating, but stood facing each other. A bush of osier, frozen into the ice, lifted its red twigs near them. Sylvia looked down at it, hesitating how to express her utter denial of any liking for the hilarious young man. Jerry misunderstood her pause and cried out: "Good God! Sylvia! Don't ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... name, but the English word, which is common, signifies "a twig, a flexible rod, usually a hurdle; . . . the original sense is something twined or woven together; hence it came to mean a hurdle, woven with twigs; Anglo-Saxon, watel, a hurdle." (Skeat.) In England the supple twigs of the osier-willow are used for making such hurdles. The early colonists found the long pliant boughs and shoots of the indigenous Acacias a ready substitute for the purpose, and they used them for constructing the partitions and outer-walls of the early houses, by forming ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... rise, he wound up his line, and again took to his oars. They soon reached the shore. Norman begged that he might be allowed to carry the fish, which the laird had strung through the gills with a piece of osier which ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... my pot yesterday, whilst he was scrambling with Philip for what remained of the contents." I inquired for the eldest; and she had scarcely time to tell me that he was driving a couple of geese home from the meadow, when he ran up, and handed Philip an osier-twig. I talked a little longer with the woman, and found that she was the daughter of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was gone on a journey into Switzerland for some money a relation had left ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... after skilful shoving and advancing, some forty or fifty miles, on his new or French side of the Rhine, finds the French drawn up at Crefeld (June 23d); 47,000 of them VERSUS 33,000: in altogether intricate ground; canal-ditches, osier-thickets, farm-villages, peat-bogs. Ground defensible against the world, had the 47,000 had a Captain; but reasonably safe to attack, with nothing but a Clermont acting that character. Ferdinand, I can ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... boat-shaped basket made of white osier-twigs stood in the way, and its heaped-up contents were covered with a cloth. Noemi began to lift it by both handles; Michael sprung to help her, and Noemi burst into a childish shriek of laughter, and drew ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... 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, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... many of them would be decorative additions to the cemetery. Surely some of them are equal in beauty to many of {237} the shrubs usually planted, and they have the added value of furnishing birds with wholesome food. Here is a part of Mr. Kennard's list: shad-bush, gray, silky, and red osier, cornel, dangleberry, huckleberry, inkberry, black alder, bayberry, shining, smooth, and staghorn sumachs, large-flowering currant, thimbleberry, blackberry, elder, snowberry, dwarf bilberry, blueberry, black haw, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... 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 latter it throws ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... reached the cord of the valve, opened it, and the gas having a way of escape the monster ceased to rise but it still shot along in a horizontal line with prodigious rapidity. There were we squatting down upon the frail osier car. 'Take care!' we cried, when a tree was in the way. We turned from it, and the tree was broken; but the balloon was discharging its gas, and if the immense plain we were crossing had yet a few leagues, we were saved. But suddenly a forest appeared in the horizon; we must leap out at whatever ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... for life, conscious of woe at hand. To me, thus meditating, this appear'd The likeliest course. The rams well-thriven were, 500 Thick-fleeced, full-sized, with wool of sable hue. These, silently, with osier twigs on which The Cyclops, hideous monster, slept, I bound, Three in one leash; the intermediate rams Bore each a man, whom the exterior two Preserved, concealing him on either side. Thus each was borne by three, and I, at last, The curl'd back seizing of a ram, (for ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... smoothly rotating. So clear'd softly between and tooth-nipt even it ever 315 Onward moved; still clung on wan lips, sodden as ashes, Shreds all woolly from out that soft smooth surface arisen. Lastly before their feet lay fells, white, fleecy, refulgent, Warily guarded they in baskets woven of osier. They, as on each light tuft their voice smote louder approaching, 320 Pour'd grave inspiration, a prophet chant to the future, Chant which an after-time shall tax ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... sacrifices took place at intervals, and had a general or tribal character, the victims being criminals or slaves or even members of the tribe. The sacrificial pile had the rude outline of a human form, the limbs of osier, enclosing human as well as some animal victims, who perished by fire. Diodorus says that the victims were malefactors who had been kept in prison for five years, and that some of them were impaled.[798] This need not mean that the holocausts were quinquennial, for they may ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... beautiful. In the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May. The trees planted ten years earlier on the banks—weeping willows, osier, alder, ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature and the lay of the land made suitable—held amid their foliage ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... of the English lady Kalliope shall serve her day and night, doing in all things the bidding of the Queen wherein if Kalliope fail by one hair's breadth of perfect service, I, Stephanos the elder, her grandsire, will beat her with pliant rods fresh cut from the osier trees until the blood of ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... 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
... 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, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back; He bridled her mouth with a silkweed twist, He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now through evening's dewy mist With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand is reached ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... 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, together, and drove them into the fold, and penned them up, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... If they be in it or without; And for this shade, which therein shines Narcissus-like, the sun too pines. Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge My temples here in heavy sedge; Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide; Or, to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermining root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at my lines the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... left her shoe behind in the black slime; she was conscious, too, that her other foot was sinking deeper and deeper in the treacherous marsh. There was nothing to hold by, there was not even an osier near at hand; behind the gentian rose a thicket of rosy-blossomed willow-herb, and here and there was a creamy tassel of meadowsweet, but even these were ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... springs; such, too, is Siena when you get there, but redder, her grey stones blushing for her sins. And the country blushes for her as you draw near, for all the vineyards are dotted with burning willows in the autumn—osier-bushes flaming at the heart. Let it be night when you arrive—the dead vast and middle of a still night. Then suffer yourself to be whirled through the inky streets, over the flags, from one hill to another. It is deathly quiet: no soul stirs. The palaces rise on either hand like ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... lifted a cover, and exclaimed with pleasure, though it was the simplest present she had received that day. Only an osier basket, graceful in design and shape, lined with moss, and filled with holly sprays, the scarlet berries glowing beautifully among the polished green. No note, no card, no hint of its donor anywhere appeared, for none of them recognized the boldly written address. Presently a thought ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... renew'd, When two years after came a boy to be The rosy idol of her solitudes, While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, Or often journeying landward; for in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare was ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... grape, softer than both the down of the swan, and than curdled 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, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... otherwise, that lay there unnoticed and unappropriated. Each can was furnished with four or five large pebbles inside, and was secured at the end with brown paper if the original lid was lost. They were packed in osier-plaited baskets, and hidden away in a corner of the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... fenced round by a shrub called el lechero, or milk-tree, which derives its name from a white liquid oozing out of it when a branch is broken off. This liquid, however, is sharp and caustic. The sticks, about six feet in height, throw out young shoots like the osier, and when pruned become very thick, and form an excellent fence. Within the enclosure were growing patches of wheat, potatoes, and Indian corn, as also the yuca root, from the flour of which palatable cakes are formed. This mountain plantation was cultivated, the old man told ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... think it so 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 ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... wont to drive The younglings of the flock: so too I knew Whelps to resemble dogs, and kids their dams, Comparing small with great; but this as far Above all other cities rears her head As cypress above pliant osier towers. ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... lips all ashen, He prayed—till back, with ghastlier rage and roar, The demon rout rushed, strung to fiercer passion, And crashed his osier door. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... swan Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale; And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Rears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle, Protective of his young. The Seasons: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... be the next best thing to the blacksmith's forge. Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking over at osier-beds! Among all the innumerable occupations that cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers-on, chair-mending may take a station in the first rank. When we sat down with our ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... night-shirt; and the dew drenched his feet as he swung along the pathway to the river. The old willow was full of small birds; they sat ruffling their feathers, and when Mike sprang into the boat they flew through the gray light, taking refuge in some osier-beds. And as he looked down stream he saw the night clouds dispersing in the wind. He pulled, making the boat shoot through the water for about a mile, then touched by the beauty of the landscape, paused to view it. Cattle lay in the long, moist meadows, harmonizing ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... frowning night, Checkring the 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 kind We sucking on her naturall bosome find: Many for many vertues excellent: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of a coarse kind, are made use of for gathering up potatoes, Indian corn, or turnips; the settlers finding them very good substitutes for the osier baskets used for such purposes in the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... parentheses round his mouth which can be but the foot-prints of pain and thought. He could not see us in our secluded shelter and I could not make my mouth utter his name—he who had wrung my heart as a peasant twists an osier withe. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... 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 like two ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... the developement of this quality. Is she less gifted with strength of intellect, with calmness, or comprehensive understanding than man, employ the greater efforts to supply this defect. Let the solid preponderate over the merely ornamental. Plant not the pliant osier, but the firmer elm. Instil principles of severe reasoning, and form habits of connected thought. Is she rich in imagination? Madam de Stael tells us she is, that this is the chief of her faculties, and that "her sentiments are troubled by her fancies, and her actions ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... passed into other forms already, together with a loaf of wholemeal bread. Mr. Stone would presently emerge in his cottage-woven tweeds, and old hat of green-black felt; or, if wet, in a long coat of yellow gaberdine, and sou'wester cap of the same material; but always with a little osier fruit-bag in his hand. Thus equipped, he walked down to Rose and Thorn's, entered, and to the first man he saw handed the osier fruit-bag, some coins, and a little book containing seven leaves, headed "Food: Monday, Tuesday, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate, forsaking the chimnies and houses, they roosted every night in the osier-beds of the sits of that river. Now this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... up so early, while you were all in bed, finding May-roses for you, with the May-dew on them. And if your father and mother will let us go, I'll take you up the river to the osier island; or you shall ride my Ruby, and we'll go off a long, long way into the country, us three, and have dinner in a new place, where you have never been. Because ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... amusements was to set brick traps for small birds. At Holkham in the winter time, by baiting with a few grains of corn, I and my brothers used, in this way, to capture robins, hedge-sparrows, and tits. Not far from the chateau was a large osier bed, resorted to by flocks of the common sparrow. Here I set my traps. But it being summer time, and (as I complained when twitted with want of success) French birds being too stupid to know what the traps were for, I never caught a feather. Now this osier bed was a favourite ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... minajxo, mineralo, metalo. organ : organo, -ilo; (music) orgeno. organic : organika. organise : organizi. origin : deveno, origino. original : original'a, -o. ornament : ornamo; garnituro. orphan : orf'o, -ino. oscillate : balancigxi, pendoli. osier : salikajxo. ostentation : fanfaronade, parado. ostrich : struto. other : alia, cetera. ought : devus. ounce : unco. outlaw : proskripcii. outlay : elspezo. outlet : defluejo, elirejo. outline : konturo, skizo. outrage : perfort'ajxo, -i. oval : ovalo, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... in the latter part of the autumn in southern fields it is common to see a great elm-tree black with them, from the highest bough downwards, and the noise of their chattering can be heard a long distance. They roost in firs or in osier-beds. But in the blackest days of winter, when frost binds the ground hard as iron, the starlings return to the roof almost every day; they do not whistle much, but have a peculiar chuckling whistle at the instant of alighting. In very ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk-like man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier-woven wings, of Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Carabi,[1] Cetoniae, Buprestes, Chrysomelae,[2] rival and even surpass the magnificent Dung-beetles in the matter of jewellery. At times we encounter splendours which the imagination of a lapidary would not venture to depict. The Azure Hoplia,[3] the inmate of the osier-beds and elders by the banks of the mountain streams, is a wonderful blue, tenderer and softer to the eye than the azure of the heavens. You could not find an ornament to match it save on the throats of certain Humming-birds and the wings of a ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... jamais eteinte, Sombre, que vous nommez l'Inquisition sainte; Quand j'ai pu voir comment Torquemada s'y prend Pour dissiper la nuit du sauvage ignorant, Comment il civilise, et de quelle maniere Le saint office enseigne et fait de la lumiere; Quand j'ai vu dans Lima d'affreux geants d'osier, Pleins d'enfants, petiller sur un large brasier, Et le feu devorer la vie, et les fumees Se tordre sur les seins des femmes allumees; Quand je me suis senti parfois presque etouffe Par l'acre odeur ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... of osier, for the transport and measure of shingle-ballast. Supplied to the gunner for transport of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... constructed of osier rods neatly woven together into a sort of basket-work, and covered with an untanned hide with the hairy side in. It was nearly oval in shape, and resembled a great bowl some three feet and a half wide and a foot longer. A broad paddle with a long handle lay in it, and the boy, getting ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... 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 clothes covered ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... grade ahead. On the bush road the going was good—now and then a small drift, but nothing alarming anywhere. The anti-climax had set in. Again the speckled trunks of the balm poplars struck my eye, now interspersed with the scarlet stems of the red osier dogwood. But they failed to cheer me—they were mere ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands, feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low shining on the marsh. It was the Fish House, and we were near our journey's end—perhaps the end of all journeys, save that last swift trail ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... 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
... became necessary for the magistrates 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 ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... 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
... 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
... 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 peasant, as ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gilt spangles. On each side of this piece are sleeping-rooms. The furniture of the five is exceedingly simple—a standing bedstead, a table, and a few wooden chairs. But Ahin Blay is a civilised man who strews his floors with matting, and has osier fauteuils from Madeira. These quarters are quite wholesome and comfortable enough for temporary use. They would be greatly improved by mounting on pillars or piles; and they might serve for all seasons save ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... 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 within ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... family communities, their presence leading to some deformation of the plant that serves to shelter them. A shrivelled fruit or an arrested and swollen shoot, such as may be due respectively to the Pear-midge (Diplosis pyrivora) or the Osier-midge (Rhabdophaga heterobia), is a frequent result of the irritation set up by these little grubs. In a larva of the crane-fly family (Tipulidae, fig. 20) living underground and eating plant-roots, like the well-known 'leather-jacket' grubs of the large 'Daddy-long-legs' ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... taken by Thenardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight was impossible. Had Thenardier, spurred on by that thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and intelligence into genius, had Thenardier invented a third mode? No one has ever ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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
... should be remembered, was one of those suspension bridges formerly employed by the Incas, and still used in crossing the deep and turbulent rivers of South America. They are made of osier withes, twisted into enormous cables, which, when stretched across the water, are attached to heavy blocks of masonry, or, where it will serve, to the natural rock. Planks are laid transversely across these cables, and a passage is ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... down the staircase; but she declined, and descended very well with the help of my arm. When the door was opened, and she found herself once more in the open air, surrounded by her children, she thanked God, with tears of gratitude, for her recovery, and all his mercies to us. Then the pretty osier carriage arrived. They had harnessed the cow and young bull to it; Francis answering for the docility of Valiant, provided he guided him himself. Accordingly, he was mounted before, his cane in his hand, and his bow and quiver on his back, very proud to be mamma's charioteer. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... peel the green rods, men and children with nimble fingers plait the white canes. All the basket-makers are themselves plaited into one co-operative association. From time immemorial Villaines had made baskets, the osier of the valley being of excellent quality. But the products could not be disposed of satisfactorily; they were bought by regraders, who beat down the prices of the wares, and the workmen had no means of seeking out the markets, in which ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould |
