"Osier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... teeth with rage, I made desperate efforts to resist. Patience, with hideous calmness, bound me to a tree with an osier shoot. At the touch of his great horny hand I bent like a reed; and yet I was remarkably strong for my age. He fixed the owl to a branch above my head, and the bird's blood, as it fell on me drop by drop, caused me unspeakable horror; for though this was ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... 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 ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... no glittering ivory set with gold, No marble covers the deluded mold, By its own wealth deluded; but the shrine With simple natural ornaments does shine. Round Cere's bower, but homely willows grow, Earthen are all the sacred bowls they know. Osier the dish, sacred to use divine: Both course and stain'd, the jug that holds the wine. Mud mixt with straw, make a defending fort, The temple's brazen studs, are knobs of dirt. With rush and reed, is thatcht the hut it self, Where, besides what is on a smoaky ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... 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 viburnum. The great tangle of vine and lace work ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... sweeping she carefully sorted the scraps, and put them into boxes under the counter; then she neatly rolled up the brown-paper curtains, which had been let down to exclude the afternoon sun; shook the old patchwork cushions in the osier-bottomed chairs; watered the rose-geranium and the monthly rose, which flourished wonderfully in that fluffy atmosphere; set every pin and needle in its place, and shut the door, which was opened again at sunrise. Of late years, Grand'ther's occupation had declined. No new customers ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the osier grove! Wake, trembling, stainless, virgin dove! Wake, nestling of a parent's love! Let Moran see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale; And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier Isle, Protective of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... vr. 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
... in 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 ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... 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 than are wanted; but if the labour is wanted, the labourer should be decently ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would have 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; ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... ether 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 never ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... aided him 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 ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... through the elm-tree copse, Winding by the stream, light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leads— Past the boughs she stoops and stops: Lo! the wild swan had deserted, And a rat had ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... carpenters became basket-makers, and they did not succeed badly in this new manufacture. At the point of the lake which projected to the north, they had discovered an osier-bed in which grew a large number of purple osiers. Before the rainy season, Pencroft and Herbert had cut down these useful shrubs, and their branches, well prepared, could now be effectively employed. The first attempts were somewhat ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... And then, alas! the fresh cheese that he devoured, osier baskets and all! Ten, when I asked for my money, he started to roar and shoot ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... for that rod, master," said William. James was very busy stringing the fish through the gills upon a piece of osier. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Lake. The garden was described by Bishop Wordsworth 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 wild geranium ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... with his crozier, O'Clonarchy of Lismore, They are less now than the osier Swaying ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... shafts 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 ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... de Naire (1892); Jerome Coignard, and La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedanque (1893); and Histoire Contemporaine (1897-1900), the latter consisting of four separate works: 'L'Orme du Mail, Le Mannequin d'Osier, L'Anneau d'Amethyste, and Monsieur Bergeret a Paris'. All of his writings show his delicately critical analysis of passion, at first playfully tender in its irony, but later, under the influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... wind-stirred in no wise On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:— Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd:— An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:— Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd With one o'erarching heaven of smiles ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... 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 in their semi-unconsciousness ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... 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 at the extreme south, may be known by its bright purplish-red ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... floated, and was carried by the waves into the darkness. It was the tarred flask, kept afloat by its osier cover. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 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; Many ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 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; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Many beautiful shrubs which have been introduced from foreign countries do well in Ontario, but our native shrubs serve all decorative purposes. For damp ground there is no better shrub than the red osier dogwood. This shrub will do well on almost any kind of soil. The swamp bush honeysuckle grows quickly and is suitable for clay land; so are the black elderberry and several species of viburnum. The hazel which may be ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... 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 to take him into custody. They then made ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... hides, leather, and a collection of fine shoes made in Haiti. Next to this case was a display of coffee beans and an interesting exhibit of hats made from palm leaves and corn husks. The chairs were made from the osier, or water willow. In the rear was a cabin made from the natural woods imported from Haiti. The roof was covered with palm leaves. The entrance was draped with an American flag on the, left and the red and blue flag of Haiti on the right. This Haitian; flag was made ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... 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 ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... formed his plan. He ordered portable boats of a light wooden frame and osier work lined with leather, after the model of those used in the Channel among the Britons and subsequently by the Saxons, to be prepared in the camp and transported in waggons to the point where the bridges had stood. On these frail ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of the 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 ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... aft, or deep in Neptune dipped. Plant cassias green around, thyme redolent, Full-flowering succory with heavy scent, And violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream. And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam, Of cork; or of the supple osier twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: —In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin. Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their narrow cells, and choke the crannies fast With pollen, or that gum specific which Out-binds ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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
... 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 closely the shape of the ovoid walls. Between these strips is contrived ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... one called up some story or recollection. Alternating with these, came richer presents,—books and vases and silver; then from the poor people in and about Pattaquasset, a couple of corn husk mats, a nest of osier baskets. The children brought wild flowers and wild strawberries, the fishermen brought fish, till Mrs. Derrick said, "Child, we might as well begin to lay ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 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.
... a mile of open water, and the maidens started off with a large supply of dried flesh slung in osier baskets on their backs. Some of the young braves looked after them as they went and disputed as to which of them they would like to choose as squaw ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... Whereto we shepherds oft are 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
... boy, behind that bunch of osier. Hold out thy pole. Let me see thine hands. Thou art but a straw, but, our Lady be my speed! Now hangs England ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... the waves; "To creep scarce seeming; o'er the shelving banks "The stream-fed poplar, and the willow hoar, "A grateful shadow cast. The brink I reach'd "Dipp'd first my feet, then waded to my knee; "Not yet content, I loos'd my zone, and hung "Upon a bending osier my soft robe: "Then naked plung'd amid the stream; the waves "Beating, and sporting in a thousand shapes; "My arms around in every posture flung; "A strange unusual murmur seem'd to sound, "Deep from the bottom; terror-struck I ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of 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 the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... who wrote (1724) a work on savage manners, compared with the manners of heathen antiquity. Lafitau, who was greatly struck with the resemblances between Greek and Iroquois or Carib initiations, takes Servius's other explanation of the mystica vannus, 'an osier vessel containing rural offerings of first fruits.' This exactly answers, says Lafitau, to the Carib Matoutou, on which they offer sacred ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... nestled 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 ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ride was in order; first around the Fort among the men—Captain Wayne, Osier Mike, Scout Al Rennie—then out over the sagebrush flat. "Here's the old battle ground of the horses; here's where you chased the coyote, and here's where Blazing Star took you over the single stringer bridge on that black night." It was less than a year he had been away, and yet Jim felt ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... large quantity of relics, which are also fully described, consisting of stone implements, pottery, cotton and feather cloth, osier and palmillo mats, yucca sandals, weaving sticks, bone awls, corn ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... 1914. On the next Monday 200 Uhlans occupied the 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, son of the gardener of Count D'Hespel, simply because they ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... an effort, and accepted the Vice-Prefect's son's invitation to see the oil-making at a villa of theirs near the coast. The villa, or farm, is an old fortified, towered place, standing on a hillside among olive-trees and little osier-bushes, which look like a bright orange flame. The olives are squeezed in a tremendous black cellar, like a prison: you see, by the faint white daylight, and the smoky yellow flare of resin burning in pans, great white bullocks moving round a huge millstone; vague figures working at pulleys ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... up that board! So! Now, place it thus across the bows. Hack off that sapling end! Now that dry twist of osier! Never mind the boat, man; we can afford to leave her now. Tear off that outer strip of hide. See, the wood beneath is dry! Quick—you ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... furnish'd around, Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound. * * * * * The moon on the east oriel shone, Through slender shafts of shapely stone, By foliated 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 the willow-wreaths ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... make Elysian shades not too fair, too divine. Soon was God Bacchus at meridian height; Flush'd were their cheeks, and bright eyes double bright: Garlands of every green, and every scent From vales deflower'd, or forest-trees branch-rent, In baskets of bright osier'd gold were brought High as the handles heap'd, to suit the thought Of every guest; that each, as he did please, Might fancy-fit his brows, silk-pillow'd at his ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... that Jerry was not notably acute, but it had seemed to her that her dislike for his 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! ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... water-pipes, hats, dry and liquid measures, cups, fencing, canoe-fittings, bridges, carrying-poles for any purpose, pitchforks, and a thousand other articles are made of this unexcelled material. Here it serves all the purposes to which the osier is applied in Europe. It floats in water, serves for fuel, and ropes made of it are immensely strong. Bamboo salad is prepared from the very young shoots, cut as soon as they sprout from the root. The value of bamboo in Manila varies according ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... and his comrades should best escape. At last he lighted upon a good device, and much he thanked Zeus for that this once the giant had driven the rams with the other sheep into the cave. For, these being great and strong, he fastened his comrades under the bellies of the beasts, tying them with osier twigs, of which the giant made his bed. One ram he took, and fastened a man beneath it, and two others he set, one on either side. So he did with the six, for but six were left out of the twelve who had ventured with him from ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... tree of that 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 ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris |
