"Mossy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... romantic heart could desire. There was something sinister and ironical even in the sunshine that lighted up these bleak hills. The silver waters of a spring—whose source was hidden somewhere high up among the mossy boulders—dripping silently from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears. The deathly stillness was broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin skin glimmered ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... very softly—in whispers," he went on, laughing. "Do you suppose the trout are so observant as to mind it? If you sit here,—on this mossy stone, close by me, can't I enjoy two things ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old watermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to turn. An ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two country boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down; and all about the steps down which ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... the bloomless heather, were here and there buried in blue shadows, and streaked here and there with sharp stripes of sun. The new-fired larches were green in the glens; and "pale primroses" hid themselves in mossy hollows and under hawthorn roots. All these things were new to me; for I had noticed none of these beauties in my younger days, neither the larch woods, nor the winding road edged in between field and flood, nor the broad, ruffled bosom of the hill-surrounded loch. It was, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... water drew her irresistibly. He wondered what strange thoughts wandered through her head. At last she got up, and for a minute or two she was hidden from his gaze; then he saw her again, wearing a Mother Hubbard, and with her little bare feet she stepped delicately over the mossy bank. She came to the water's edge, and softly, without a splash, let herself down. She swam about quietly, and there was something not quite of a human being in the way she swam. He did not know why it ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... his small bare room underneath the mossy roof, with the small square window through which the breezes blew, Allan stood and looked about him. Dinner was over. It had been something of a feast, with unusual dainties, and a bunch of lilacs upon the table. Sairy had on a Sunday ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... gaping windows through which the wild growths of the moat and the trees of the park were visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. One end abutted on the round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, and in an angle of the building stood a graceful well-head crowned with mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper window-sill I remember noticing a pot ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... begin the song: To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, The dreams of Pindus and th' Aonian maids, Delight no more—O thou my voice inspire Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire! Rapt into future times, the bard ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... unmoved, a ruin at his feet, The lowliest home where human hearts have beat? Its hearth-stone, shaded with the bistre stain, A century's showery torrents wash in vain; Its starving orchard where the thistle blows, And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; Its knot-grass, plantain,—all the social weeds, Man's mute companions following where he leads; Its dwarfed pale flowers, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Singing, smiling, dimpling down To a mossy nook and brown, Under bending boughs of May; Where the nodding wind-flower grows, And the coolwort's lovely pink, Brooding o'er the brooklet's brink Dips and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... I love on mossy couch to sing A Spanish roundelay, And see my sweet companions Around commingling gay,— A roving band, light-hearted, In frolicsome array,— Who 'neath the screening parasols Dance down the merry day. But more than all enchanting At night, it is to me, To sit, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... they came to a place where a little brook flowed between green, mossy banks. It was a hot day and the children ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... interrupted by the occasional flight of some winter bird, which, alighting on a limb, would shake down a thousand feathery showers, until he seemed frightened at the unusual sound. The forest trees made a truly majestic appearance, with their naked, giant arms and mossy branches intersecting each other, and fast bound by the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... is almost invariably placed in the closest proximity to some mountain-stream, on the rocks and boulders of which the male so loves to warble; sometimes on a mossy bank; sometimes in some rocky crevice hidden amongst drooping maiden-hair; sometimes on some stream-encircled slab, exposed to view from all sides, and not unfrequently curtained in by the babbling waters ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... virgin forest had arisen, a forest of roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled, so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood—narrow ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... substances with its mossy mantle, as it invests all things of the mind with forgetfulness, seemed to have respected these signs, which apparently had been made with some degree of regularity, and probably with a definite purpose. Occasionally the marks were hidden under tufts of myrtle, which spread ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dwarfed. Their tops were cut off by the Lord of Ashleigh on the day that Lady Jane Grey was beheaded. Queen Elizabeth heard of it and threatened to confiscate the estate. Look at the turf, my friend. Ages have gone to the making of that mossy, velvet carpet." ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... From that day "Mossy," as she called the dog, was added to the number of baby's friends—the other two were Bennie and the little clog. To this last she confided, in language of her own, much that no one else understood, and Seraminta did not again attempt to take it from her. ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... trifle longer. The nesting habits and eggs are precisely the same as those of the Semipalmated variety. Data.—Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, June 28, 1898. Four eggs. Nest a neatly rounded hollow, sunk into a mossy hummock in marshy ground. Collector, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Sons of God, roaming the Earth, Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men, 180 And coupled with them, and begot a race. Have we not seen, or by relation heard, In courts and regal chambers how thou lurk'st, In wood or grove, by mossy fountain-side, In valley or green meadow, to waylay Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene, Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa, Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more Too long—then lay'st thy scapes on names adored, Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan, 190 Satyr, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... of red-clay hills and innumerable little streams ends my riding for the present, and the road eventually leads into a cul-de-sac, the source of the little streams and the home of spongy morasses whose deceptive mossy surface may or may not bear one's weight. Bound about the cul-de-sac is a curious jumble of rocks and red-clay heights; the strata of the former inclining to the perpendicular and sometimes rising like parallel walls above the earth, reminding one of the "Devil's Slide" ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... neighbor for many a mile around and visited at intervals by the wolves, was to them the hub of the universe. But for a few surrounding villages, whither the calves were driven on fair days, the rest was only very vaguely known by hearsay. In this wild solitude, the mossy fens, with their quagmires oozing with iridescent pools, supplied the cows, the principal source of wealth, with rich, wet grass. In summer, on the short swards of the slopes, the sheep were penned day and night, protected from beasts ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... thou would'st careful tend those fragrant lovely flowers, close of a day the doors, And with thine own hands take the can and sprinkle water o'er the mossy pots. Red, as if with cosmetic washed, are the shadows in autumn on the steps. Their crystal snowy bloom invites the dew on their spirits to heap itself. Their extreme whiteness mostly shows that they're more comely than all other flowers. When much they grieve, how ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... cease to sing, Cosy are they in the mossy nest, Birdies like we, dear, Weary must be, dear, Glad in the gloaming ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... the nest is generally composed of the hay from the stack; if it be built in a bush by the side of a river, and (which is frequently the case) below flood mark, it is generally covered on the outside with the rubbish which has been left there by the flood; and if it build in a mossy stump, the front of the nest is composed of the dark- coloured moss which grows there. ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... which woman gives to household utensils—were now dirty, overlaid with the marks of endless use, with the wreckage of unavoidable neglect. The wheels were deformed with mud, the metal darkened by the smoke of explosion, the gray paint spotted with mossy dampness. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the hill, J——- and I turned aside to examine the old stone fortress which was erected in this mountain pass to bridle the Highlanders after the rebellion of 1745. It stands in a very desolate and dismal situation, at the foot of long bare slopes, on mossy ground, in the midst of a disheartening loneliness, only picturesque because it is so exceedingly ungenial and unlovely. The chief interest of this spot in the fact that Wolfe, in his earlier military career, was stationed here. The ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brook, that it might be cool and shady there when the cattle went down to drink. There was a spring of pure cold water boiling up from beneath some rocks not far from the brook, on the side toward the clearing. The water from this spring flowed down along a little mossy dell, until it reached the brook. The bed over which this little rivulet flowed was stony, and yet no stones were to be seen. They all had the appearance of rounded tufts of soft green moss, so completely were they all covered and ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... work of moderate sense will read? Such works are held as antiquate and mossy; And as regards the younger folk, indeed, They never yet have been so pert ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... On quivering pinion woos the Queen of flowers; Inhales her fragrance, as he hangs in air, And melts with melody the blushing fair; Half-rose, half-bird, a beauteous Monster springs, 310 Waves his thin leaves, and claps his glossy wings; Long horrent thorns his mossy legs surround, And tendril-talons root him to the ground; Green films of rind his wrinkled neck o'espread, And crimson petals crest his curled head; 315 Soft-warbling beaks in each bright blossom move, And vocal Rosebuds thrill the enchanted grove!— Admiring ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... that spoke was by no means a hopeful one, and there was anything but a hopeful look on the face of the little girl who slowly raised herself up from a mossy seat, where she had been quite hidden by the branches of a tall birch-tree, that hung so low as to dip themselves into the waters of the brook at the times when it ran fullest. It was a very pretty place, and a very strange place for any child to look anxious or discontented in. But the ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... a green and mossy bank There flows a clear and fairy stream; There the pert squirrel oft has drank, And thought, perhaps, 'twas made ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... square neck, and a bodice with deep points back and front, laced with a silver cord. The front breadth, "petticoat," as it was called, was white satin, creamy now with age, embroidered with pink and yellow roses and mossy green leaves. The brocade fell away in a long train, and at the joining was a cascade of fine old lace called Mechlin. The elbow-sleeves were edged with it, and at the neck, the lace had a fine wire run through it at the back that made ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... here thou buildest thee an holy cell; And so the peaceful years went gliding by. But ah! what living thing mote yet avoid Death's dreary summons?—And thine hour did sound When all the friends on whom thine heart relied Slept on strange pillows on the mossy ground. So, while the moon lit up Kasuga's crest, O'er Sahogaha's flood thy corse they bore To fill a tomb upon yon mountain's breast, And dwell in darkness drear for evermore. No words, alas! nor efforts ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... coursing rivulets. The last icicles on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence upon the human soul—when clear sunlight illuminates everything, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and as they approached the blurred and refracted edge of the picture they became indistinct. There were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a deep mossy green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal. And something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. But the first time Mr. Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his hands shook, his head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... no more delightful sensation than that of riding in one of these luxuriously appointed cars which skim, light and airy as feathers, along the soft, mossy avenues of Marentina. They move with absolute noiselessness between borders of crimson sward and beneath arching trees gorgeous with the wondrous blooms that mark so many of the highly cultivated varieties ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... through which a mountain runlet descended, unrolling a ribbon of green mossy herbage on its way, and slipping out of sight over the edge of a precipice of two hundred feet or so. Beyond this the eye saw nothing but clouds of mist heaving and smoking to the very lip of the fall. Young Prior halted for a moment on the farther slope to take breath, and precisely ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... himself seated upon the low mossy wall of an ancient churchyard, where hundreds of grey stones rise above the sward, under the fantastic branches of two or three half-withered ash-trees, spreading their arms in everlasting love and sorrow over ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... merrily over the crisp, white frost to the chestnut trees. How the frost has opened the burs! It has done half their work for them already. 8. How they laugh and sing, and shout to each other as they fill their baskets! The sun looks down through the yellow leaves; the rocks give them mossy seats; the birds and squirrels wonder what these strange people are doing in their woods. 9. Jeannette really helps, though she is only a little girl; and her father says at night, that his Jane is a dear, good child. This makes her very happy. ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... half naked. The only comfortable-looking people are the monks and the priests, and the soldiers in the fort. For there is a fort there, constructed on the huge ruins of one which may have done duty in the reign of Edward the Black Prince, or earlier, in whose mossy embrasures are mounted a couple of cannon, which occasionally sent a practice-shot or two at the cliff on the other side of the harbor. The garrison consists of a dozen men and three or four officers and non- commissioned officers. I suppose they are relieved occasionally, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... nothing more aggressive than cabbages and turnips, we turned away from the sight with aversion. Yet the villages are picturesque enough, and so are the towns. Timber-framed and gabled houses, steeply pitched red roofs and stunted grey and mossy church spires, certainly make no unpleasing picture. In happier days I have admired the grape-vines meandering over the whitewashed cottages, and marvelled at the monotony of taste which furnished every window-ledge with exactly four pots ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... too," said she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;—it is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon rep, it will make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... girls drifted swiftly along. In front of them, at the corner of the lake, near the road, was a mossy boat-house under a walnut tree, and a little landing-stage where a boat was moored, wavering like a shadow on the still grey water, below the green, decayed poles. All was shadowy ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... mountain village of K——, in Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No—a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep street, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and fringed with long grass, but rudely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... shady dell, Where the soft breezes swell, And beautiful wood-sprites by pearly streams wander— Where the sweet perfume breathes, O'er angel twined wreaths, Luxuriantly blooming the mossy trees under— Here, beneath the bright vine Whose leaves intertwine, I'm dreaming of thee, my ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... right out without knowing where he was going, and of course the way was hard, very hard indeed. The grass was so tall that he couldn't see over it, and the ground was so rough that it hurt his tender feet, which were used to the soft, mossy bank of the Smiling Pool. He had gone only a little way before he wished with all his might that he had never thought of seeing the Great World. But he had said that he was going to and he would, so he kept right ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... in his basket, presently bringing out of it a small bunch of pink bell-heather,—the delicate waxen type of blossom which is found only in mossy, marshy places. ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... panting steamers, through thy foaming waters sweep; And behold the grain-fields golden, where the bison grazed of eld; See the fanes of forests olden by the ruthless Saxon felled,— Plumd pines that spread their shadows ere Columbus spread his sails. Firs that fringed the mossy meadows ere the Mayflower braved the gales, Iron oaks that nourished bruin while the Vikings roamed the main, Crashing fall in broken ruin for the greedy ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... taken by overwhelming odds. It was near sundown when I came to a brook and falls I could not remember passing. I looked about me. Somewhere I had gone off the old trail—everything was new to me. It widened, as I rode on, up a steep hill. Where the tree-tops opened, the hill was covered with mossy turf, and there were fragrant ferns on each side of me. The ground was clear of brush and dead timber. Suddenly I heard a voice singing—a sweet girl voice that thrilled me, I do not know why, save that I always longed for the touch of a ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers, brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath, footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as soon as they found I was flanking ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... a little out of his road, he perceived a pretty fountain which partly veiled a natural grotto. A path led to it, and this path had for Gilbert an irresistible attraction. He seated himself upon the margin of the fountain, resting his feet upon a mossy stone. This ought to be his last halt, for night was approaching. Under the influence of the bubbling waters, Gilbert resumed his dreamy soliloquy, but his meditations were presently interrupted by the sound of a horse's feet which clattered over the path. Raising ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries—ghostly Shapes May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Giaramara's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... on her ear like the swell of the ocean. The three wanderers made their way by the bank of an artificial stream and came to the Swiss valley, where stands a chalet that had more than once given shelter to Hortense and Napoleon. When Caroline had seated herself with pious reverence on the mossy wooden bench where kings and princesses and the Emperor had rested, Madame Crochard expressed a wish to have a nearer view of a bridge that hung across between two rocks at some little distance, and bent her steps towards ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... trees, which, as has been noticed, grew at the ultimate point where mortal footstep might safely tread, she perceived through their thick branches the recess in the rock. Here they entered; and her guide pointed to a mossy seat, in the formation of which, to judge from its regularity, art had ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm; I love to wet my foot in Herman's dews; I love the promptings of Isaiah's muse; In Carmel's holy grots I'll court repose, And deck my mossy couch with ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... the village, whose huts loomed solemnly between the woods and the dunes in the softening twilight. The van den Endes were lodged with the captain of a fishing-smack in a long, narrow wooden house with sloping mossy tiles and small-paned windows. The old man threw open the door of the little shell-decorated parlor and peered in. "Klaartje!" his voice rang out. A parrot from the Brazils screamed, but Spinoza only heard the soft "Yes, father," that came ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... waters gripped several coils of line and jerked him back and under. But the innocent cause of all the trouble made no false estimate of his ability to rectify his error. He forged straight for his mark—that mass of slimy roots and mossy trunks—and soon he was seen to rise waist high from the water, stumble heavily as his feet sank deep in the sticky ooze, and, recovering, plunge headlong up ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... of this bay, of which Cape Whitsunday is the most southern point, and Point Banks the northern one, is, in all respects, like the island of St Hermogenes, seemingly destitute of wood, and partly free from snow. It was supposed to be covered with a mossy substance, that gave it a brownish cast. There were some reasons to think it was an island. If this be so, the last-mentioned bay is only the strait or passage that separates ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... at the fountain's sliding foot Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside My soul into the boughs does glide; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... delight in bright things, especially pebbles and flowers for their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of sticks, which has been built in our own Zoological Park in New York City, is fronted by a cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this it brings its colorful treasures, sometimes a score of bright star blossoms, which are renewed when faded and replaced by others. All this has, probably, something to do with courtship, which should ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Natures handiwork; Those rocks that upward throw their mossy brawl Like castled pinnacles of elder times; These venerable stems, that slowly rock Their towering branches in the wintry gale; That field of frost, which glitters in the sun, Mocking the whiteness of a marble breast! Yet man can mar such works with his rude taste, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... liking, and lo! there is no more of him. He goes and straightway forgets till it shall please his High Mightiness to call again. Oh! and we—we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... o'er it's rocky bed, Like spirit wild and free. The mellow mavis tunes his lay, The blackbird swells his note, And little robin sweetly sings Above the woody grot. There meet me, love, by a' unseen, Beside yon mossy den, Oh, meet me, love, at dewy eve, In Morag's fairy glen; Oh, meet me, love, at dewy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... hungry look; And each from his basket promptly took A part of its precious pic-nic store, And tried the others to get before, As on with their ready gifts they ran, To reach them forth to the poor old man; And said, "Good Sir, take this and eat While resting thus on your mossy seat." ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... was large, to be sure, but its capacity was already so far taxed that it could not provide a jury room. It was therefore the custom of the bailiffs to use as a jury room an open, mossy glade shaded by a great live oak tree on the farther bank of the Llano, and distant two or three hundred yards from the court house. Here, therefore, the jury were conducted, the bailiffs retired to ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... over-arching oaks. It seemed as if all local varieties of trees and vines had conspired to weave the leafy roof—maples, big madronos and laurels, and lofty tan-bark oaks, scaled and wrapped and interwound with wild grape and flaming poison oak. Saxon drew Billy's eyes to a mossy bank of five-finger ferns. All slopes seemed to meet to form this basin and colossal forest bower. Underfoot the floor was spongy with water. An invisible streamlet whispered under broad-fronded brakes. On every hand opened tiny vistas of enchantment, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... and fell. Thus Tarn the hunter took me to the world that faces across the sea of the west on the gate of Munra-O. And so it was that there grew upon me the glamour of the hunt, though I had forgotten Tarn, and took me into mossy places and into dark woods, and I became the cousin of the wolf and looked into the lynx's eyes and knew the bear; and the birds called to me with half-remembered notes, and there grew in me a deep love of great rivers and of all western seas, and a distrust of cities, and all ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... embellishment, and may be fairly taken as a place where art and taste have done a great deal to improve nature. A long ridge of varied ground sloping to the foot of the hill called Benarty, and which originally was of a bare, mossy, boggy character, has been clothed by the son, father, and grandfather; while the undulations and hollows, which seventy or eighty years since must have looked only like wrinkles in the black morasses, being now drained and limed, are skirted with deep woods, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines, which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... timid, for there is no place in earth or air or water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy stone, where he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... in the stillness. Great trees reared their majestic heads to mingle their foliage and shut out the light; every creeping, flying, walking creature seemed awed into a vague murmuring that was deeper than silence. The Grove of Mysteries was a semicircular space of cool, mossy sward, bowered in great trees and tangled vine screens; its background was the bare rock of the cliffside itself—actually, though unknown to the rabble, the outer rocky wall of the great chamber—and against ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... her left hand, for the trees of it were mostly alder. But when she was come just over against Rock Eyot, she found a straight creek or inlet of the water across her way; and the said creek ran right up into the alder thicket; and, indeed, was much overhung by huge ancient alders, gnarled, riven, mossy, and falling low over the water. But close on the mouth of the creek, on Birdalone's side thereof, lay a thing floating on the dull water, which she knew not how to call a boat, for such had she never seen, nor heard of, but which was indeed ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... between ruined walls of gray stone, half covered with clinging ficus, spanned by broken arches, with here and there a fallen urn, led them through picturesque turns and by mossy steps to the foot of the huge black cross erected before the empty church. Neither spoke; they did not care for words and the only expression which framed itself audibly was that oft repeated jubilate of health and youth, "How beautiful it ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love, And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... was the sign of recovering health. Kind nature put that district to sleep while she operated on the disquieted lower functions. I looked on my later self as one observes the mossy bearded substances travelling blind along the undercurrent of the stream, clinging to this and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... MOSSY-CUP.) Leaves obovate or oblong, lyrately pinnatifid or deeply sinuate-lobed or nearly parted, the lobes sparingly and obtusely toothed or entire. Acorn broadly ovoid, 1 in. or more long, one half to almost entirely inclosed in a thick and woody cup with usually ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... the winding road through the woods, which, following the estuary, turned the point, they presently found themselves, as they mounted, quite clear of the mist that lay below them on the river. Their steps were noiseless on the mossy path, and almost immediately after they had turned the corner, as Francis paused to light a cigarette, they heard from just below them the creaking of oars in their rowlocks. It caught the ears of them both, and without conscious curiosity they listened. On the moment ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... a little brook running in and out among the trees, and it sounded like music when it went over the stones. Well, they sat down on the grass, near a mossy old stump, and ate their lunch, until there wasn't even so much as a crumb of a jam tart left. They had just gotten through when, all of a sudden, they heard a big noise. It was like some one stamping his ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... the banquet-board—a board literally as well as figuratively—from which many a feast, seasoned as no viands were elsewhere, had been eaten in Rainbow Valley. It was converted into a table by propping it on two large, mossy stones. Newspapers served as tablecloth, and broken plates and handleless cups from Susan's discard furnished the dishes. From a tin box secreted at the root of a spruce tree Nan brought forth bread and salt. The brook gave Adam's ale of unsurpassed crystal. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly back. Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon also felt something move along his spine. And then the path turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's trespassing—I must have a board put up!' before she turned. Powers above! The face he had seen at the opera—the very woman he had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... my horse's head toward Thebes, which we reached in two hours. It was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two thousand years ago. The town is built partly on the hill of the Cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. An aqueduct, on mossy arches, supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. The plain to the north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the Sphinx, beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... little church, Kenneth's first beautiful work; and Kenneth told them how pleasant it was up at Miss Arabel's, and of the tame squirrels that he fed at his window, and of the shady pasture-path that led away over the brook from the very door, and up among pines and into little still nooks where dry mossy turf and warm gray rocks were sheltered in by scraggy cedars and lisping birches, so that they were like field-parlors opening in and out from each other with all sorts of little winding and climbing passages, between clumps of bayberry bushes and tall ferns; and that ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... just this quartet together," remarked the captain, when his brother-in-law had cooled off and was lying comfortably stretched along a mossy knoll. ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... got away from the camp of Chicag, and crossing one arm of Cedar Lake reached at noon the Mossy Portage. Striking into the cedar Forest at this point, I quitted for good the Saskatchewan. Just three Months earlier I had struck its waters at the South Branch, and since that day fully 1600 miles of travel had carried me far along its shores. The Mossy Portage is ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... pleasantness of these beech woods, where the light is green from the silky verdure of the young leaves, and where the mossy wood-paths are embroidered with thousands of flowers, from the earliest violet and primrose, the wood-anemone, the wood-sorrel, the daffodil, and the wild hyacinth of spring, to the wood-vetch, the woodroof, the campanulas, and the orchises of summer;—for all the English orchises are here: that ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the view of the castle and park of Clonbrony. He had not seen it since he was six years old. Some faint reminiscence from his childhood made him feel or fancy that he knew the place. It was a fine castle, spacious park; but all about it, from the broken piers at the great entrance, to the mossy gravel and loose steps at the hall-door, had an air of desertion and melancholy. Walks overgrown, shrubberies wild, plantations run up into bare poles; fine trees cut down, and lying on the ground in lots to be sold. A hill that had been covered with an oak wood, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... to be empowered to vindicate his friend's fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the path towards the basketmaker's cottage. As he gained the water-side, he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling a soft mellow tune,—the tune of an old English border-song. The deer lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes towards the opposite ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) (Mossy-Cup Oak, Over-Cup Oak). Large-sized tree. Heartwood "oak" brown, sapwood lighter color. Wood heavy, strong, close-grained, durable in contact with the soil. Used in ship- and boatbuilding, all sorts of construction, ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... were walking alone through the deep woods. Seldom the daylight shimmered through the green veil. Soon he came to a rocky gorge in the mountains. Under the mossy stones in the bed of the stream, he heard the water secretly tinkling downward, ever downward, as ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... little girls were in the woods with dear Miss Grey and baby Susie, who was just three years old. Betty was walking a little behind the others with her eyes fixed on the ground. It was damp and mossy, and there was a thick growth of ferns and underwood at the side of the path. Suddenly she saw something move quickly through this, and disappear down a hole. She stopped and moved aside the ferns and moss. What do you think she saw ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... Vaucluse. The glen seems as if stuck into the mountain's depths by one blow of the enchanter's wand, and just at the end, where the rod might have rested in its downward sweep, is the fathomless well whose over-brimming fulness gives birth to the Sorgues. We climbed up over the mossy rocks and sat down in the grotto beside the dark, still pool. It ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... lapse of water at noon O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems To float through ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... day. Upon another I stepped from a lovely road upon the Aventine into an old garden where, at the end of a long, lofty, and narrow alley of trimmed evergreens, stood the Dome of St. Peter's filling the vista against an afternoon sky. In these mossy and silent old places, the trees and plants seem to have sucked their vigor from the sun and soil of many long-gone centuries, and to remain ghosts of themselves and hoary reminiscences of their day ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... a pail and ran off, ready to be useful; but, while he waited for the bucket to fill down among the mossy stones, he looked about him, well pleased with all he saw,—the small brown house with a pretty curl of smoke rising from its chimney, the little sisters sitting in the sunshine, green hills and newly-planted fields far and near, a brook ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... with delicate flower and trefoil leaves grows on many mossy banks, especially on one on ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... emerge—as he had come from the sea that way, it was, I concluded, the nearest way to it. My path led by the yew-hedge which I have just mentioned, and I suddenly saw the place where Mr. Cazalette had stood when he thrust his arm into it; thereabouts, the ground was soft, mossy, damp: the marks of his shoes were plain. Out of mere curiosity, I stood where he had stood, and slightly parting the thick, clinging twigs, peeped into the obscurity behind. And there, thrust right in amongst the yew, I saw something white, a crumpled, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... and the Instruction and improvement of the Intellect, 6. In rainy weather the feet should be protected by overshoes or galoches 7. hark they are coming! 8. A, neat, simple and manly style is pleasing to Us. 9. alas poor thing alas, 10. i fished on a, dark, and cool, and mossy, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... on the mossy stump, Ben obediently floundered through the following analysis, with constant help in the spelling and much private wonder what would come ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the party, and with his torch held above his head was slowly making his way through the underbrush, when, emerging from the thicket, his foot touched something which but softly resisted it. Thinking it to be some old and mossy log, he shifted his torch to the other hand, and was preparing to step over the obstacle whatever it might be, when, as the smoke blew backward, the flaming torch revealed the sleeping children, Prue still holding Randy's letter in ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... while, the Etheling yielded and turned aside. "Let it be as you have said—though I cannot believe yet that it will happen." Coming back where a fallen tree made a mossy seat, he dropped down upon it and sat staring at the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... could not even see how a man could get at the stones that I heard grinding away above, except he went up the rope that hung from the ceiling. So I walked round the corner of the place, and found myself in the company of the water-wheel, mossy and green with ancient waterdrops, looking so furred and overgrown and lumpy, that one might have thought the wood of it had taken to growing again in its old days, and so the wheel was losing by slow degrees the shape of a wheel, to become some new awful monster ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald |
