"Willow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... high country and a dry country. There are high mountains and wide plains; but there are very few rivers and running brooks, because there is so little rain. However, in some places the Persians have cut canals, and planted willow-trees by their side. Rice will not grow well in such a dry country, but sheep find it very pleasant and wholesome. The hills are covered over with flocks, and the shepherds may be seen leading their sheep and carrying the very young lambs in their arms. This is a sight which reminds us of the good ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... spoke the newcomer reached up for the framed motto over her own ample mirror and yanking it down with one single tug began to busy herself adroitly with a snarl in the picture-cord. Like a withe of willow yearning over a brook her slender figure curved to the task. Very scintillatingly the afternoon light seemed to brighten suddenly across her lap. You'll Be a Long Time Dead! glinted the motto through its ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Rondelet materials for his immortal work upon the 'Animals of the Sea.' The innumerable wild fowl of the "Bouches du Rhone;" the innumerable songsters and other birds of passage, many of them unknown in these islands, and even in the north of France itself, which haunt every copse of willow and aspen along the brook sides; the gaudy and curious insects which thrive beneath that clear, fierce, and yet bracing sunlight; all these have made the district of Montpellier a home prepared by Nature for those who ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... middle of a Spring-time walk, Smith gave utterance to a decision concerning which he had already written, dutifully, to an interested party in the South. They had passed the willow-fringed bank of Lagunita, the red boathouse, the double avenue of young pines, and, crossing into the back road, strolled down to the low gate opposite the Farm; this they climbed and came into a little hollow where knowing people find yellow violets. He had ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... patches and narrow walks of red, flat bricks, the box trees cut and trimmed in the form of peacocks with outstretched tails, animals, anything absurd that the designer fancied. Close to the river bank drooped a willow, and a wide spreading cedar overspread ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... put in the rapids, and constructed by building wing dams diagonally down to the middle of the stream until the two ends came near together, and in this narrow outlet was placed a sort of wicker basket trap, made of long willow sprouts loosely woven together and closed at the pointed lower end, which was elevated above the surface of the water below the dam. The fish, in going down stream, ran into this trap, and soon found themselves at the lower end and out of ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... 25th, the leaves of the plane tree were tawny; of the hazel, yellow; of the oak, yellowish green; of the sycamore, dirty brown; of the maple, pale yellow; of the ash, a fine lemon-colour; of the elm, orange; of the hawthorn, tawny yellow; of the cherry, red; of the horn-beam, bright yellow; of the willow, still hoary. Yet, many of these tints cannot be considered complete, in some seasons, till the middle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... before him, and those not over the well-beaten course in the gymnasium, but by rocky goat trails and by-paths that made his task no easier. He started off slowly. He was too good an athlete to waste his speed by one fierce burst at the outset. At first his road was no bad one, for he skirted the willow-hung Asopus, the boundary stream betwixt Attica and Boeotia. But he feared to keep too long upon this highway to Tanagra, and of the dangers of the road he soon ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of Arden. Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts. A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to the valleys where men reside—what love and peace and gentleness—what promise of better ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... special sharply-defined track of mental vision is preferred by each individual who sees them. The influence of the mood of the moment is shown in the curves that are felt appropriate to the various emotions, as the lank drooping lines of grief, which make the weeping willow so fit an emblem of it. In constructing fire-faces it seems to me that the eye in its wanderings tends to follow a favourite course, and it especially dwells upon the marks that happen to coincide with that course. It feels its way, easily diverted by associations ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Sharp, with many others of this kind, were all invented and treated for this purpose and after this fashion. I shall have to say more on the same subject when I come to The Snob Papers. In this instance he wrote a very pretty ballad, The Willow Tree,—so good that if left by itself it would create no idea of absurdity or extravagant pathos in the mind of the ordinary reader,—simply that he might render his own work absurd ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... find it, the best plant is fanwort. Other good kinds are hornwort, water starwort, tape grass, water poppy, milfoil, willow moss, and floating plants like duckweed. Even if you do not know these by name they are probably common in your neighbourhood. Fill the tank with clean water. That taken from a spring or well is better than cistern water. After two or three days, when the plants seem ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... pleasanter reaches of our river, and none quieter, than this, for the rush and the intolerable crowds are above stream or below stream, but not here. And there is no such holiday house for young men as Dockett, hidden in its willow walks and islanded by the Thames in front and by the expanse of Chertsey ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... and listened. And as she did so, her eyes and sense were seized with the beauty of the wood. The mystery of early solitary hours seemed to be still upon it; both in the sunlight and the shadow there was a magic unknown to the later day. In a clearing before her spread a lake of willow-herb, of a pure bright pink, hemmed in by a golden shore of ragwort. The splash of color ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds—not quite two ounces of meat per day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow buttercup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world. Franklin returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... behind the nearest stunted willow tree; behind anything—quick!—for they're coming: a great dim wedge, with the apex toward us, coming swiftly on wings that propel two miles to the minute, when backed by a wind that ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... more eagle feathers and ties them to a little willow stick whose end is inserted in one of the central roof beams. No home is complete without this, for it is the soul of the house and the sign of its dedication. These feathers are renewed every year at the ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... from the nearest land; an island uninhabited and completely surrounded by dangerous reefs and shoals; shunned by ships and spoken of as a death trap by sailors. But one tree, other than alder and willow, grew upon it. Three hundred feet above sea-level on the high, flat top, a lone and stunted spruce rose from the tundra and breasted the heavy gales that swept the ocean. For firewood there were but the drift logs of the beach. There were ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... meadow Rosalee was still running up and down the soft banks of the brook trying to catch the Celluloid Fish. She had on a green dress. It was a slim dress like a willow wand. She had her shoes and stockings in one hand. And a great bunch of wild blue Forget-me-Nots in the other. Her hair was like a gold wave across her face. She looked pretty. The Springtime looked pretty too.—Out ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... extracted her from old nests of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles, from the galleries dug in a roadside bank by the Colletes (A short-tongued Burrowing-bee known also as the Melitta.—Translator's Note.) and lastly from the cavities made by some digger or other in the decayed trunk of a willow-tree. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... junk gatherers, or stretched at full length amid the irises and tansy he would lie for hours watching the frail insects that play on the surface of the stream, water spiders, or white butterflies, dragon flies, chasing each other amid the willow leaves, or ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the other. They knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the blue sky looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows, and the thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads was a mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that it wafted to them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have done. From the far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all the freshness of the grassy ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... customary height; the walls were thicker than usual, and the muskrats' fur was longer and heavier than any old-timer had ever known it to be. The beavers were working by day as well as by night, cutting the willow brush, and observant eyes noted that they were storing twice their usual winter's supply. The birds were acting strangely. The ducks and geese, which ordinarily flew south in October, that autumn had, a month earlier, already departed. The snowbirds and the cedar birds were bunched in the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... up to this time the numerous blunders he had made had not sufficed to cure him. He was always awaiting a woman who would consent to pose as an idol, an angel in a velvet gown, to whom he could at his leisure address sonnets written on willow leaves. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... ran lightly to meet her, wondering if he should have a look, or a half-whisper from her; but she let him take the white thongs from her hand, with the same half- smile of shamefacedness still set on her face, and, going past him, came softly up to the Lady, swaying like a willow-branch in the wind, and stood before her, with her arms hanging down by her sides. Then the Lady turned to her, and said: "Look to thyself, our Maid, while we are away. This fair young man thou needest not to fear indeed, for he is good and leal; but what thou shalt do ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... No need of witchcraft. All it wants is a head—a certain practical capacity which, of course, is not taken in with every spoonful of barley meal; for you know I have always said that an honest man may be carved out of any willow stump, but to make a rogue you must have brains; besides which it requires a national genius—a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with Virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut, willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden plots. True it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of substantial modern houses, runs that mark ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... irrational mood, I would read—I would frequently steal off to some quiet spot in the neighbourhood, and employ myself in various histories, of which reading I was always very fond. My favourite retreat was up in an old pollarded willow-tree, secure from fagging, and therefore enjoying the distant voices in the playing-fields, delightfully contrasting with the quiet splash of the trout leaping ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels,- a myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new-christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam Riggs, an old rough humourist who passed for a wit; her daughter, who passed for nothing, married to a Captain Miller, full of good-natured officiousness. These good folks were friends of Miss ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Vaucouleurs the clear waters of the Meuse flow freely between banks covered with rows of poplar trees and low bushes of alder and willow. Now they wind in sudden bends, now in gradual curves, for ever breaking up into narrow streams, and then the threads of greenish waters gather together again, or here and there are suddenly lost to sight underground. In the summer the river is a lazy stream, barely ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... honour of the Empress and her suite. Yearly they tumble in, and yearly are renewed, as the soft greensand strata are graven away, and what must have been once a long promontory becomes a group of fantastic pierced rocks, exactly like those which are immortalized upon the willow-pattern plates. ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Wrens I wrote about last month, they prefer to live in swampy land and along rivers. They nearly always find a hole in a decayed willow tree for their nest—low down. This isn't a willow ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... party walked along, with the rapid current of the river close to their feet on one side, and the high green hedge shutting them in on the other, while the tops of the willow trees spreading over their heads completed the coolness and shadiness of the pathway. Rollo led the way, and his father and mother followed, one by one, for the path was not wide enough for ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... signs of a settlement in a state of rapid and prosperous improvement were visible. The devious course of a deep and swift brook, that in the other hemisphere would have been termed a river, was to be traced through the meadows by its borders of willow and sumach. At a point near the centre of the valley, the waters had been arrested by a small dam; and a mill, whose wheel at that early hour was without motion, stood on the artificial mound. Near it was the site of a ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... tragic line, And emulate the notes that rung From the wild harp that silent hung By silver Avon's holy shore Till twice an hundred years rolled o'er; When she, the bold enchantress, came With fearless hand and heart in flame, From the pale willow snatched the treasure, And swept it with a kindred measure, Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove With Monfort's hate and Basil's love, Awakening at the inspired strain, Deemed their own ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... those idle fellows longed to be outside, and how they looked at the open door and window, as if they half meditated rushing violently out, plunging into the woods, and being wild boys and savages from that time forth. What rebellious thoughts of the cool river, and some shady bathing place, beneath willow trees with branches dipping in the water, kept tempting and urging that sturdy boy, who, with his shirt collar unbuttoned, and flung back as far as it could go, sat fanning his flushed face with a spelling book, wishing ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... agitated. "I was, and must meet him there;" and she walks slowly back to the entrance, turns and returns, watches until her soul has nearly sickened, at length espies the joyous signal. Franconia did not deceive her. Oh, no! he stands there in the glare of a lamp that hangs from a willow-tree. She vaults over the path, grasps his hand with a sister's affection, and simultaneously the soft swelling music of "Still so gently o'er me stealing!" floats in the air, as dulcet and soul-stirring ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... around him might well have wondered to what useful or ornamental purpose the green willows growing everywhere in Spenersberg Valley might not be applied. The very pictures hanging on the wall—engraved likenesses of the great masters Mozart and Beethoven—had their frames of well-woven willow twigs; and the rack which held the books and sheets of music was ornamented on each side with raised wreaths of flowers wrought by deft hands from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... of Niksich. We then discovered that a large part of the town was formed of houses—huts would be more correct—constructed on sledges, huge runners of timber, into which had been driven stakes, forming the frame of the house. The stakes were filled in with willow branches, and the walls were completed with mud, the whole being roofed with thatch. The forward end of the runners was perforated for a bar, to which oxen could be attached, and the house was evidently to be drawn from place to place, as the herds ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Madge," cried Hal, and bent his bow, "Just watch this famous shot; See that old willow by the brook— I'll hit the middle knot." Swift flew the arrow through the air, Madge watched it eager-eyed; But, oh! for Harry's gallant vaunt, The wayward ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... from place to place, through Kyle, Carrick and Galloway (his death drawing near), he came to his brother's house, in the parish of the Sorn, where he was born, where he caused dig a cave, with a willow bush covering the mouth thereof, near to his brother's house. The enemy got notice, and searched the house narrowly several times, but him they found not. While in this cave, he said to some friends[222], 1st, That God would make ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... in vain for the thin, bowed figure of his grief-stricken sister. There were two willow-shaded graves in the grass-grown church-yard, and o'er them bent the spectre-like form of the Hermit of the Cedars, his gray locks moistened by the falling night-dews, and his pale face turned upward to the midnight stars with ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Halil, 'I am seeking one Whose days are all in a brightness run.'— 'Then I am he, for I have no lands, Nor have any gold to crook my hands. Favor, nor fortune, nor fame have I, And I only ask for a road and a sky— These, and a pipe of the willow-tree To whisper the ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... charm, and abounds in homely common-sense. Mothers, fortunately, no longer bring up their daughters in the foolish way in which Emily Proudie was reared. The second story is included only because there is no other edition of Pussy Willow. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... the arid and inhospitable deserts which adjoin it upon the north and south, Khorasan, the ancient Parthia and Hyrcania, is a terrestrial Paradise. Parthia, though scantily wooded, still produces in places the pine, the walnut, the sycamore, the ash, the poplar, the willow, the vine, the mulberry, the apricot, and numerous other fruit trees. Saffron, asafoetida, and the gum ammoniac plant, are indigenous in parts of it. Much of the soil is suited for the cultivation of wheat, barley, and cotton. The ordinary return upon wheat and barley is reckoned ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... "this is the ring which the Princess has lost. You saved my life in the willow meadow, and I ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... hollow willow trees are favourite nesting places, but a bit dangerous if too near the water's edge. Many birds delight in straw stacks, and if disturbed will simply go up higher, so as to be out of the way ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... turned over a log, and out of the willow basket on the hearth took another and laid it carefully on the top. As it sputtered and crackled she sat down on the rug and clasped her hands over her knees, looking with half-shut eyes in the dancing flames, unmindful of their heat or the burning ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... not I," said the young lady, making her escape; "the third person makes a silly figure on such occasions. When you want me for breakfast, I will be found in the willow-walk ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... you try a second time to bring my whole house into bad repute! If anything like this happens a single time again, you will come out of my house in a way that will not please you! See, up there hangs a very sharp willow rod for such cases. Now go and think ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... afternoon, however, as she stood in the doorway, it seemed to be singularly calm; the southwest trades blew but faintly, and scarcely broke the crests of the long Pacific swell that lazily rose and fell on the beach, which only a slanting copse of scrub-oak and willow hid from the cottage. Nevertheless, she knew this league-long strip of shining sand much better, it is to be feared, than the scanty flower-garden, arid and stunted by its contiguity. It had been her playground when she first came there, a motherless girl of twelve, and she ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... waist, wearing only loose short trousers of cheap blue or brown cotton, the lamplight gleaming on their sweating bodies. Here are goldsmiths beating out the jewelry for which Hongkong is famous; next are scores of shops in all of which shoes are being made; then follow workers in willow-ware and rattan, makers of hats, furniture and hundreds of other articles. In every block is an eating-house, with rows of natives squatted on benches, and with large kettles full of evil-smelling messes. The crowds in the streets vie with ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... such implements were. Yet they made toasting sticks of hard wood, carved out wooden platters, constructed a rude but serviceable dining table, added to their supply of traps of various kinds, and finally made two large baskets of split willow. The last task was not as difficult as some others, as both had seen and taken a part in basket making in Illinois. The cabin was now crowded to inconvenience. Over their beds, from side to side, and up under the sloping roof, they had fastened poles, and from all of these hung furs ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... almost as much pleasure in her children's pets as they did, was standing near a clump of arbor-vitae, holding in her hands a "willow-ware" plate from which the pigeons were feeding. She was at this time, though the mother of Edgar's twelve-year-old chum, not thirty years of age, and her pensive beauty was in its fullest flower. Against the sombre background the arbor-vitae made, her slight figure, clad in soft, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... substitute for that useless vegetable. Grease-wood is a perfect —most perfect imitation in miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color of it. As to the other fruits and flowers of the country, there ain't any, except "Pulu" or "Tuler," or what ever they call it,—a species of unpoetical willow that grows on the banks of the Carson—a RIVER, 20 yards wide, knee deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked, that it looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it, and had run about in a bewildered way and got lost, in its hurry to get out again ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of government; but he will never forgive you for being on the side of the little ones of the world, and for pronouncing against the temporal power. If you only heard with what gentle ferocity he derides Monsieur de la Choue, whom he calls the weeping willow of Neo-Catholicism!" ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... o'clock on the afternoon in question Ester was thoroughly tired, but little plum pies by the dozen were cuddling among snowy napkins in the willow basket, and Alfred's face was radiant as he expressed ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... into a course of wonder concerning the pretty little structure she beheld. Structure was not the proper word for it at all; for it seemed to have grown from the nature around, with a little aid of human hands to guide it. Branches of sea-willow radiant with spring, and supple sprays of tamarisk recovering from the winter, were lightly inwoven and arched together, with the soft compliance of reed and rush from the marsh close by, and the stout assistance of hazel rods from the westward cliff. The back was afforded by a grassy hillock, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... information which Kate imparted, while he only seemed to be carelessly trimming a switch which he had pulled from a willow close at hand. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... sharp gallop down the rutted lane. The house, gaunt and spectral, and bleaker and more forbidding than the darkening sky, was behind us, and ahead were the broad level meadows, checkered with little clumps of willow and cedars, as meadows are that lie near the salt marshes. I had feared we might be intercepted at our gate, but I was mistaken. We had swerved to the left and were thudding down the level road, when an exclamation from Mademoiselle made me turn in my saddle. My look must have been ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... among the boys, and her uncommon beauty, coupled with the magnetism belonging to her sex, secured for her a popularity which almost amounted to adoration. She was tall for her age, as are most young daughters of Han; and her perfectly oval face, almond-shaped eyes, willow-leaf eyebrows, small, well-shaped mouth, brilliantly white teeth, and raven-black hair, completed a face and figure which would have been noticeable anywhere. By the boys she was worshipped, and no undertaking was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... the shaggy steep, The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrowned, The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep, The tender azure[46] of the unruffled deep, The orange tints that gild the greenest bough, The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,[ba] The vine on high, the willow branch below, Mixed in one mighty scene, with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... ahead, filled with slender, willow-trees, many of them broken off, shot, torn, twisted, and splintered. Dead soldiers lay about under the smoke, their dirty shirts or naked skin visible between jacket and belt; to the left on a sparsely wooded elevation, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... trick of badgering witnesses with a brow-beating stare from half-closed lids clung unpleasantly to him, discounting his acquired distinction of bearing. This was Isaac Ruferton, of the firm of Ruferton and Willow. From criminal lawyer to corporation-scourge and from corporation-scourge to corporation counsel are logical stages of development. From clients who need, and can pay for, a mind of unusual resource, as formerly from vagabond's ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... light skiff, ceasing to shoot through the lazy water as when the oars flashed and dripped, glided out of the fierce July sunlight into the cool shade of the great drooping willow branches—I standing up in the swaying boat, she sitting still and with deft fingers guarding herself from stray twigs or the freedom of the resilience of moving boughs. Again, the water looked golden-brown under ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... best protection. The wife who knows when to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising signs of ill-humor in her master's mind, and guard against them carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband's way when his anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent when his temper is just slightly ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the best four-legged friend I ever had. He died near Fort MacPherson, on the Peel River, and is buried there. And Kazan was the father of Baree; Gray Wolf, the full-blooded wolf, was his mother. Nepeese, the Willow, still lives near God's Lake; and it was in the country of Nepeese and her father that for three lazy months I watched the doings at Beaver Town, and went on fishing trips with Wakayoo, the bear. Sometimes I have wondered if old Beaver Tooth himself ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Loire) the cliffs are pierced with caves that are inhabited by basket-makers, and the watercourses below are planted with willow, or else have cut osiers lying in them soaking to preserve their suppleness. In the caves, on the roads, in every house, one sees little else but baskets in process of making or cut osiers lying handy for use. The women split and peel the green rods, men ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the children out to get red willow sticks. Of these he cut off as many pieces, of equal length, as would serve to invite his friends to a feast. A red stick was sent to each one, not forgetting ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Doll-in-the-Grass. Doubleday, Page and Company for The Animals' New Year's Eve and Nils and the Bear from the Further Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlooef. The Youth's Companion for Chip's Thanksgiving, The Rescue of Old Glory, The Tinker's Willow, The Three Brothers, and Molly's Easter Hen. The Thomas Y. Crowell Company for The Bird, and The Gray Hare from The Long Exile by Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. The American Book Company for The Three Little Butterfly Brothers. Little, Brown and Company for How Peter Rabbit Got His White ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... a pail of water. The pail is of plaited willow twigs chinked with clay. With the other hand she leads a little girl about three years old. Halla is dressed in a white jerkin and black skirt, both of knitted wool. She wears her silver girdle around her waist. The child has on white knitted clothes. ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... gun, as one who says "I can defend myself!" "Do you so prize This thing?" demands the other in surprise. "Set up a mark, and you shall shortly see What sort of weapon 'tis I bear with me!" "Take my white pony!" "No," his friend replies, "Set up a willow wand." ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Nith I sat and wept When Coila I thought on, In midst thereof I hung my harp The willow ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... wings of morn she seems to rise, And join the strain of more than mortal harmonies. Thy heart shall beat exulting as she sings, And thou shalt cry: Give me an angel's wings! With sadder sound, o'er Pity's cave, The willow in the wind shall wave; And all the listening passions stand, 318 Obedient to thy great command. With Poesy's sweet charm impressed, Fancy thus shall warm thy breast; Still her smiling train be thine, Still her lovely visions shine, To cheer, beyond my boasted ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... And even obstinate little Hans understood what bread and apple meant; when his sister put him down on his feet, he made no resistance, but, taking her hand, stumped along into the house without a word. Fred followed them, switching a willow wand, as if to suggest the most efficient method of teaching Hans to walk by himself. When they reached the dining-room, the boys opened their eyes wide to see the big loaf from which Mrs. Stein cut each a slice, and they were not slow in setting their teeth into the rosy apples, ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... tell them from each other: The American elm is vase-like in shape; the Lombardy poplar is narrow and spire-like; the gingko, or maidenhair tree, is odd in its mode of branching; and the weeping willow is extremely pendulous. ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... angling has been improved by human ingenuity. The Waltonian angler, and still more his English predecessors, dealt much in the home-made. The Treatise of the fifteenth century bids you make your 'Rodde' of a fair staff even of a six foot long or more, as ye list, of hazel, willow, or 'aspe' (ash?), and 'beke hym in an ovyn when ye bake, and let him cool and dry a four weeks or more.' The pith is taken out of him with a hot iron, and a yard of white hazel is similarly treated, also a fair shoot of blackthorn ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... bodily injury, the direction in which the falling sticks lie, or it may be a certain stick in the group, directs the way to a physician. In ancient times the Magian form of divining was by staves or sticks. The diviner carried with him a bundle of willow wands, and when about to divine he untied the bundle and laid the wands upon the ground; then he gathered them and threw them from him, repeating certain words as if consulting some divinity. The wands were of different ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... minutes' walk down the willow skirted path and they reached the creek. Here it was a narrow stream, hardly fifty feet wide, shallow, and full of stones over which the clear brown water ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... uncertain morning light. Fronting him rose the stately columns and porticoes of the park museum, once a member of an exposition whose glories are almost forgotten, which now veiled its need of repair in the kindly dawn and formed a symphony in gray with the willow-studded, low-lying lagoon banks. The air throbbed with the subdued noises of awakening animal life. In a shrub near them, a catbird cleared his throat in a few harsh notes as a prelude to a morning of tuneful parody, and on the slope below, a fat autumn-plumaged ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... saddle. De ole boss hees win' heem roun' de horn. Poof! das upset dat pony once more. Hees trow hees feet up on water, catch ole boss on head an' arm, knock heem right off to blazes. 'Good bye,' I say, 'I not see heem more.' Beeg feller hees loose dat rope, ron down on de bank hitching rope on willow tree an' roun' hees own shoulder an' jump on reever way down on bend an' wait for ole boss. For me? I mak dis pony cross ver' queek. Not know how, an' pass on de noder side. I see beeg feller, hees hol' de ole boss ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... down to the river, his fine figure swinging beautifully distinct in his light clothing. The dawn wind thrilled in his chest, for he had only a light coat over the tasselled silk 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 ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... make worth their care, And think accomplishments will win the fair: The fair, 'tis true, by genius should be won, As flow'rs unfold their beauties to the sun; And yet in female scales a fop outweighs, And wit must wear the willow and the bays. Nought shines so bright in vain Liberia's eye As riot, impudence, and perfidy; The youth of fire, that has drunk deep, and play'd, And kill'd his man, and triumph'd o'er his maid; For him, as yet unhang'd, she spreads her charms, Snatches the ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Indian has no religion whatever, every single act of his life carries with it some ceremonial function, and his whole being is surrounded by a shining host of ceremonial spirits. The Indian goes with prayer thoughts to the water. His bath is a sacrament. He cuts the long supple willow withes that grow on the banks of the stream, enters the sharpened end into the soil, bends and ties the feathery tops into an arch; over the arches thus made he throws his blankets; meanwhile, gathered stones ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... she is. She's sixteen. She's beautiful. She's pretty as a picture, and she knows she is. She's grown out of the rather early fullness of figure that had been hers. She's slim and tall and straight and supple and slender as a willow wand. If she had her hair up and her skirts lengthened (skirts then were only starting on their diminution to the knees), she'd pass for twenty anywhere, and a twenty singularly attractive, curiously self-possessed, strikingly ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... on which was written "Consort." I observed, with a childlike wonder, which concealed no latent vein of criticism, the glowing carmine of her cheeks, the unmixed blue of her pupilless eyes, from a point exactly in the centre of which a geometric row of tears curved to the earth. A weeping willow—somewhat too green, alas!—drooped with evident reluctance over the scene, but cast no shade on its contrasting richness. The title of the piece was "Bereavement" By some strange means, it served as the pole-star to ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... beautiful Yo-ki-hi, however skilful the painter may have been, is after all only a picture. It lacks life and animation. Her features may have been worthily compared to the lotus and to the willow of the Imperial gardens, but the style after all was Chinese, and to the Emperor his lost love was all in all, nor, in his eyes, was any other object comparable to her. Who doubts that they, too, had vowed to unite wings, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Dorsenne, who came from the bright glare of the salon, a moment to distinguish in the darkness the features of the Countess who, dressed all in white, was lying upon a willow couch with soft cushions of silk. She was smoking a cigarette, the lighted end of which, at each breath she drew, gave sufficient light to show that, notwithstanding the coolness of the night, her lovely neck, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... is in another hemisphere, and as I never expect to see her again, and she has probably forgotten me, I don't think I ought to wear the willow for her any longer," said Tom; "and Dona Seraphina is, you'll ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... points south of the White Mountain range. Auchincloss's house looked down upon barns and sheds and corrals of all sizes and shapes, and hundreds of acres of well-cultivated soil. Fields of oats waved gray and yellow in the afternoon sun; an immense green pasture was divided by a willow-bordered brook, and here were droves of horses, and out on the rolling bare flats ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... girl who hastes to meet her swain, Yet hesitates each step with maiden fear, So the still stream glides downward to the main, Pausing at times in fern-set pools,—and here, Where bend the willow branches to the clear Deep pool beneath, and where the forest hoar Seems whispering old tales of magic lore, They say by night the fairies dance in glee, And on the moss beside the curving shore The Queen of Elfland ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... and far, till the level road, through a turn or two, brought him into a well-wooded tract where bluffs and willow clumps suggested running streams. He left the road and, dismounting, guided his wheel between projecting roots and stumps, down through a winding cow-path which led to a lick below. Here, discarding shoes and stockings ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... burden; or was there one who thought of her sometimes?—who cared a little for her? With heightened colour and quick step she turned from the farm-yard down the steep path which led to the river's banks, and as she made her way through the thick hazel and willow brushwood she could not quite suppress the hope that she might meet Cardo. But no, perfect solitude ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... swamp. I surely was sorry for that bride. Her husband had had a chill early in the evening before they camped. She had been up with him all night and now thought he was dying. I thought he was too. I tried to make a fire out of the wet willow wood there, but could not and he got bluer and bluer. We used all the blankets we had. Finally I said, "You lie down on one side of him and I on the other." After some time his teeth stopped chattering and his color returned. I think it would ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... cicerone the victor who had made it so celebrated. The weather was bad, but it did not in the least damp his Majesty's ardour, or make him abate his curiosity. He went "into the little church of the village, examined all the tablets of inscriptions upon the walls, then visited the willow-tree under which was buried the shattered limb of Lord Anglesea, and seemed greatly impressed with all around him." Nothing escaped him, he carefully examined every position, and did not leave the field till he was master of all ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... near connexion, you know; I suppose his absence would have been more remarked than his being here. Besides, if he was in love once, he has had time to get over it, in the last six months. He does not look much as if he wore the willow still." ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... old building, just touched by the moonlight behind the swaying shadows of the weeping-willow, stopped, looked again, and finally seated himself on a ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... I found all things just as I left them. The circle or double hedge that I had made was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut out of some trees that grew thereabouts were all shot out and grown with long branches, as much as a willow-tree usually shoots the first year after lopping its head. I could not tell what tree to call it that these stakes were cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased, to see the young trees grow; and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as much alike as I could; and it is scarce credible ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... given, looking to the digging of a canal, to connect the river at Duckport with Willow Bayou, back of Milliken's Bend, so as to form a channel for the conveyance of supplies, by way of Richmond, to New Carthage; and several steam dredge-boats had come from the upper rivers to assist in the work. One day early in April, I was up at General Grant's headquarters, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... continuing to play, but turning a spirited face toward her father. "What piffle! Whenever a player pitches rotten ball you'll always hear him howling about the support he didn't get. Schlachweiler was a bum pitcher. Anybody could hit him with a willow wand, on a windy day, with the sun ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... the river began to bend and twist in numerous eccentric curves; the woods that bordered it grew denser, the banks swampy. Signs of human occupation disappeared; there were no more camps; no more cottages. Great willow trees grew close to the water's edge, five and six trunks coming out of a single root, the drooping branches sweeping the surface of the river. In places rotting logs lay half submerged in the water, looking ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... which he passed so many quiet days, and the door through which the horse timidly stepped under the shadow of that hospitable roof, are still to be seen at the old Wick house, which stands now, as it stood then, with its shaded yard and the great willow tree behind it, on the pleasant country road by which we may drive from Morristown to Mendham by the ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... made out of about 6 inches of straw, plugged up aft by a small plug of pine or willow fastened in with sealing-wax, and projecting backwards one-eighth of an inch. This projection serves a double purpose: it gives a point of attachment for the quartz needle, and on firing the bow it forms a resisting anvil on which the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... the damp raffia sad willow sticks after Miss Edith had left her, she so far forgot her trouble that the old, familiar laugh bubbled up to her lips, and once she paused in her work to answer a trilling bird in the branches overhead. She was all alone on the wide, shady lawn, and so engrossed in her own thoughts that she never ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... into somewhat free bloom, while the sandwort showed only here and there a stray flower, and the geum was only in bud. The dwarf paper birch (trees of no one knows what age, matting the ground) was in blossom, with large, handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was already in fruit, and the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, has learned that the only way to live in such a place is to lie flat upon the ground and let the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted at the summit were one of the blueberries (Vaccinium uliginosum), Bigelow's ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey |
