"Turf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... led me a child and guided my youth; To-night 'tis a dreary thought, in truth, That those gentle hands are dust. That I may be blamed, and you not be sad, That I may be praised, and you not be glad; 'Tis a dreary thought to your boy to-night, That over your sweet smile, over your brow, The clay-cold turf is pressing now, That never again as the twilight falls You will welcome your boy to the old brown walls Of the homestead ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... fine fortune, had married the Comte de Fontaine's third son. Thus those ladies who visited at La Baudraye were perpetually piqued by Dinah's success in leading the fashion; do what they would, they were always behind, or, as they say on the turf, distanced. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... than two miles distant from the ship. This "mossing," as it was termed, was by no means a pleasant duty. Before the winter became severe, the moss could be cut out from the beds of the snow streams with comparative ease; but now the mixed turf of willows, heaths, grasses, and moss was frozen solid, and had to be quarried with crowbars and carried to the ship like so much stone. However, it was prosecuted vigorously, and a sufficient quantity was soon procured to pack on the deck ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... these were used for journeys to the railway station or elsewhere in an old four-wheel conveyance, which could scarcely be termed a carriage or a waggon. In fact, it answered both purposes. The rooms were warmed by iron stoves, in the winter, the fuel used being chiefly wood and turf. The Pastor had a sort of turbary right, which supplied him with the latter. The shrubbery in front of the main building was planted with poplars, lilacs, and laburnum. The grass on the lawn was coarse and rough, and an occasional cow was tethered on it, ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... down the bank like a madman. He played on the surface like a whirlwind, and sulked at the bottom like a stone. He meditated, with ominous delay, in the middle of the deepest pool, and then, darting across the river, flung himself clean out of water and landed far up on the green turf of the opposite shore. My heart melted like a snowflake in the sea, and I thought that I had lost him forever. But he rolled quietly back into the water with the hook still set in his nose. A few minutes afterwards I brought him within reach of the gaff, and my first salmon was glittering ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... softly out of the door to seek his fortune. About two miles from the hut there was a clear space in the pine forest, where there stood a great stone cross, at the foot of which a tiny spring slept in the grass, and overflowed softly on the crisp turf at all seasons. At this place Mihal resolved to wait for the flight of the red-winged goose, and he knew the forest paths so well that a short half-hour brought him to the open glade. He knelt and bathed his face in the spring, drank deeply of its pure and tranquil waters, and then leaned back ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... built in the open fields. Why they are placed away from the village I was not told; but I would like to know. They have very much the look of underground dairy-cellars, and are built of great stones covered with turf. One or two men can go ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Country Churchyard. When you know that my poem, The Poet, begins—"Ruin seize thee!" and ends With recapitulations of horrors the poet invokes on his friends. And I'll swear, if you look at the dirge on my relatives under the turf, you Will perceive it winds up with some lines on myself—and begins with the curfew. Now you'll grant it's more probable, Bill—as a man of the world, if you please— That all these should have prigged from myself than that I should have ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... place seemed to yield us assurance of having reached our goal. The hotel is a long oblong building with two slight retiring wings, beyond which extends a square walled enclosure of what was then green turf; Cambrian Terrace overlooks the enclosure at right angles to the hotel, the whole reminding us remotely of a college quadrangle. On entering the hotel, the eye seized on the straight roomy corridors which traverse it, and the wide solid staircase, as ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... and talking about the colour of the sky. I don't believe he ever saw the sky except through the window—pane. The other day he took hold of my frock (that green one you thought so nice at Homburg) and told me that it reminded him of the texture of the Devonshire turf. And then he talked for half an hour about the Devonshire turf; which I thought such a very extraordinary subject. Harold says he is mad. It is very strange to be living in this way with people one doesn't know. I mean that one doesn't know as ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... be badly hurt," and away went Josephine, high-heeled pumps making her flight a trifle dangerous, over the slippery turf. And her ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... stunted, and with low scrub of juniper and barberry.[140] Towards the north there is an outer barrier, parallel with the main chain, on which follows a tolerably flat and rather bare plain, well watered, and with soft turf in many parts, which gently slopes to the foot of the main ascent, a wall of rock generally half covered with snow, up which winds the rough track whereby travellers reach the summit. Rills of water are not ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... I suppose. I went into her room. I remember I didn't speak for some moments. I went across to the window and pulled the blind aside, and looked out upon the railed garden of the square, with its shrubs and shadowed turf gleaming pallidly and irregularly in the light of the big ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the walk was especially beautiful. A green hollow, where the turf was soft as moss; open to the river on the right, with a glimpse of the lovely scenery beyond; and on the left, the clustering trees of the wood. Yet further, through a break in the trees, might be seen ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... had from the roots than from the trunks of the tree. Our people here dig a hollow, much like unto the shape of a funnel, on the side of a hill, or bank, fill it in with the wood and the roots, and cover the whole closely with turf. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... near the depth of plowing encourages deeper rooting of plants, and thus indirectly assists them to withstand dry weather. If the plowing is good in character, leaving the furrow-slice partly on edge, and permitting the harrow to mix part of the turf and the manure with the remainder of the soil, the best conditions ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... another horse's hoofs; and, looking back, she saw approaching her at a rapid rate a gentleman whom she knew to be a stranger. Not caring to be overtaken, she chirruped to the spirited Gritty, who, bounding over the velvety turf, left the unknown ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... shall gather: first, the Euphrasy, which makes the turf on the brow of the hill glitter as if with new-fallen manna; then, from one of the blue clusters on the top of the garden wall, the common bright blue Speedwell; and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark blue spire of Veronica spicata; then, at the nearest ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a defect, partly of subject, and partly of style, many of Mr. Browning's works make a demand upon the reader's zeal and sense of duty to which the nature of most readers is unequal. They have on the turf the convenient expression 'staying power': some horses can hold on and others cannot. But hardly any reader not of especial and peculiar nature can hold on through such composition. There is not enough of 'staying power' in human nature. One of his greatest admirers once owned to us that he seldom ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... sou'west, and the sky was torn and driven in swathes of white and grey to north, south, east, and west, and puffs of what looked like smoke scurried across the cloud banks and the glacier-blue rifts between. The mare had not been out the day before, and on the springy turf stretched herself in that thoroughbred gallop which bears a rider up, as it were, on air, till nothing but the thud of hoofs, the grass flying by, the beating of the wind in her face betrayed to Gyp that she was moving. For full two miles ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it crossed two estates. It was surmounted by a stile of four steps. There was no pause in the colt's or dog's speed. Tzaritza cleared it like a—wolfhound. Shashai with his rider skimmed over like a bird, landing upon the soft turf beyond ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... companion. Hearing the rumor, Thorstein with Bele the dragon ship mounted, Dashed through the foaming waves, straight to the place of the sepulcher steering. Wide as a temple's arch, or a king's gateway, bedded in gravel, Covered with grassy turf, arched to the top, the tomb rose forbidding. Light issued from it. Through a small crevice within the closed portal, Peered the two champions. There the pitched viking ship Stood with its masts, its yards and its anchor. High in the stern sheets Was seated a terrible figure, clad ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... he was no relation. He took a few blades of grass from the turf with which they covered her grave—when he thought that nobody was looking at him. He disappeared from his club. He traveled. He came back. He admitted that he was weary of England. He applied for, and obtained, an appointment in one of the colonies. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... thirty-five yards from the gentlemen's target; he carefully selected his arrows, examining the feathers and wiping away any bit of soil that might be adhering to the points after some one had shot them into the turf; with vigorous arm he drew each arrow to its head; he fixed his eyes and his whole mind on the centre of the target; he shot his twenty-four arrows, handed to him, one by one, by Pepton, and he made ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... emerged from among the noble lakeside trees upon a more open space. Broom and whin blossom clustered yellow and orange beneath him, garrisoning with their green spears and golden banners every knoll and scaur. But there were broad spaces of turf here and there on which the conies fed, or fought terrible battles for the meek ear-twitching does, "spat-spatting" at each other with their fore paws and springing into the air in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... anywhere except the white stalk of a lighthouse, and that, I knew, was miles away across the estuary whose waters were then invisible, for it was not only low tide, but I was descending to the saltings, having left the turf of the upper ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... amphitheatres were often erected; and at Pola in Istria, Verona in Italy, and Nimes and Arles in France, fine examples remain. A rude Roman amphitheatre, with seats cut in the turf of a hill-side, exists to this day at the old town of Dorchester in Dorset, which ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... exquisite turf surround the Casino, and under it, at the foot of the cliff, is a large pigeon-shooting gallery. Entrance, 5frs. Well-constructed carriage-drives and footpaths ramify in all directions, up the hill to the Corniche road, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... concealed here for his homeward journey, in what is called a cache, a barrel of pork. They encamped in the evening upon the open prairie. As there was no wood at hand, they built their fires of the dry excrement of the buffalo. This substance, which was called buffalo chips, burns like turf and forms a very good substitute for wood. Immense numbers of wolves surrounded the camp at night, with an incessant and hideous howling and barking. In the morning, while the explorers were sitting quietly at breakfast, a small buffalo calf ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... exposed flank from the innumerable squadrons of Edward, he dug deep and wide pits near to Bannockburn, and having overlaid their mouths with turf and brushwood, proceeded to marshal his little phalanx on the shore of that brook till his front stretched to St. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the preceding, only that one boy mounts on the back of another, who is called his Horse, another boy does the same, and the two mounted boys endeavour to pull each other from the saddle. This play is harmless when a soft piece of turf is chosen, but dangerous on the stones or ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... to rest Green grows the grass upon his breast. This patron of the turf, I vow, Ne'er served it ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... very white, very vocal lambs. The young grass had the warm fragrance of new milk. As he went he munched his buns, for he had resolved to have no plethoric midday meal, and presently he found the burnside nook of his fancy, and halted to smoke. On a patch of turf close to a grey stone bridge he had out his Walton and read the chapter on "The Chavender or Chub." The collocation of words delighted him and inspired him to verse. "Lavender or Lub"—"Pavender or Pub"-"Gravender or Grub"—but the monosyllables ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... black Angus, and even more valuable, was Haig's. The red bull, bleeding from many wounds, was plainly being worsted in the encounter. With a roar of rage, Huntington drew his revolver, urged his unwilling horse down into the arena where the turf was torn up for many yards around the combatants, circled about until he could take sure aim, and emptied every chamber of the gun into the head and neck of the Angus. The bull sank to the ground, head first, in a lumbering mass ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... southward towards Ancona, and there I rested me and breathed the strong invigorating air of the Adriatic. The snows were gone, and between me and the wall some twenty paces off—there was a stretch of soft, green turf. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of people who occupy cemeteries—except "Harry" Van Warden, and she lived in New York at the Turf Club. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... on the short soft turf, and Will pulled out a pocket-book, took the pencil from its loop, and, spreading the book wide, began after a fashion to draw what learned people call a diagram, but which we may more simply speak of as a sketch or figure of what he wished ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... the value of his purchase. For miles in every direction stretched a solid substantial growth of timber—hemlock, spruce, fir, poplar and birch, towering to hundreds of feet into the air, and many bolls five and six feet through at the butt. There was very little undergrowth and heavy turf extended in the long aisles of the ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... species unknown to his new acquaintance, he twined them into a wreath, and placed the sylvan diadem on Carl's head. The instant that he felt the light pressure on his temples, all his fears vanished; and he followed his guide, conversing pleasantly through wide avenues and over broad glades of fresh turf, which seemed to be laid out like a royal chase, till they came to a wall of rock resembling the Hahnen Klippers, and entering through an arch, a grey moss-covered tower arose in the distance. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... wid the time when I went to the classical seminary ov Firdramore! when I'd bring my sod o' turf undher my arm, and sit down on my shnug boss o' straw, wid my back to the masther and my shins to the fire, and score my sum in Dives's denominations ov the double rule o' three, or play fox and geese wid purty Jane Cruise ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... their tastes. These dwellings are often constructed on the banks of rivers, but the Canadian beaver is particularly fond of building lodges in the centre of large expanses of fairly shallow water. These are made of turf, tree-trunks, and other materials, and are often used as store houses for food reserves, as well ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... when I am, first cast in salt, and bring Part of the cream from that religious spring, With which, Perilla, wash my hands and feet; That done, then wind me in that very sheet Which wrapt thy smooth limbs, when thou didst implore The Gods' protection, but the night before; Follow me weeping to my turf, and there Let fall a primrose, and with it a tear: Then lastly, let some weekly strewings be Devoted to the memory of me; Then shall my ghost not walk about, but keep Still in the cool and silent ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... woods growing down to the edge of the fill swallowed him up. He dodged and doubled back and forth among the tree trunks, his small, patent-leathered feet skipping nimbly over the irregular turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in his lungs to carry him another rod. When he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leaned against a tree and bent his head this way and that, listening. No sound came to his ears except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as Mr. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... it was originally four corners, but today it is certainly a circle with a big open space in the center, and in the very middle of that stands a flag staff upon which floats the stars and stripes. The whole open space is covered with the softest green turf. Not a lawn, mind you, such as one may see in almost any immaculately kept northern town, with artistic flower beds dotting it, and a carefully trimmed border of foliage plants surrounding it. No, this circle has real Virginia turf; the thick, rich, indestructible ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... fair land is covered with jest such graves: its turf is tread down by the footprints of the mourners who go about the streets. They pray, they weep: the night is long, is long. But the morning will ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... way back he felt impelled to climb for a moment on the bank at his favourite spot. It amazed him to see the ground all torn up, and to find a trowel lying half bedded in the turf at the top. Still more did it surprise and perplex him to find a penknife, which he recognised at once as belonging to Trimble, and which he distinctly recollected having seen in that hero's hand ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... suddenly rose above the distant horizon ahead of him, trembled faintly, and then burned with a steady lustre. It was a light at the hacienda. Guiding his horse half abstractedly in this direction, his progress was presently checked by the splashing of the animal's hoofs in the water. But the turf below was firm, and a salt drop that had spattered to his lips told him that it was only the encroaching of the tide in the meadow. With his eyes on the light, he again urged his horse forward. The rain lulled, the clouds began to break, the landscape alternately ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... say a word or two about the Ladies' Race at Epsom on Friday next. There is absolutely no knowing what will start for the Oaks nowadays until the numbers go up—and no Turf Prophet will venture a selection until the morning of the race—and this is where the perspicuity of an Editor like yourself, Mr. Punch, scores a distinct hit—for such a paltry consideration as "knowing nothing about it" is not likely to daunt a woman who takes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... The turf shall be my fragrant shrine; My temple, Lord! that arch of thine; My censer's breath the mountain airs, And silent ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... sometimes bring her sky-blue eggs for a gift, and the summer wind come sowing seeds of magic to take the fancy of the little one beneath. Sometimes it shakes the hyacinths like a rattle of silver, and spreads the turf above with ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... for an army; there was not water enough for boats, no station for archers, no space for a charge of the ponderous knights, amongst the reedy pools. William decided on constructing a causeway, and employed workmen to cut trenches to drain off the water, and raise the bank of stones and turf, under the superintendence of Ivo Taillebois. However, Hereward was on the alert, harassing them perpetually, breaking on them sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, in such strange, unexpected ways, that at last the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... quite sure you won't mind?" she said, tentatively. "Well, your place is so beautiful,—even apart from this—this— bower of nymphs,—it is so shadowed with great trees, and so green with old turf, that when I saw you this morning walking under the tree, I made up a romance about you,—a pretty little romance. You are quite sure you don't mind? You were the last of an ancient family, and you were very delicate, and your mother kept you in this lovely solitude, hoping to preserve ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... happens that the brief period of sunshine and prosperity has done its evil work with them too. They have imbibed ideas of gentility and desire for excitement utterly foreign to the quiet, peaceful life of an agriculturist. They have gambled on the turf and become involved. Notwithstanding the fall of their father from his good position, they still retain the belief that in the end they shall find enough money to put all to rights; but when the end comes there is a deficiency. Among them there ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the rock, the band had split; a section passing on either side of the bowlder. Out and down the lion had leaped—ten feet out and as far down. His momentum had overthrown his victim which had regained its feet and struggled desperately. The turf was torn up for thirty feet beyond the rock. I found only the tracks of the hind feet of the lion; it was not hard to imagine that, his front claws were fastened in the shoulders of his prey, and that his terrible ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the megalithic peoples frequently dwelt in huts of great stones. Yet in the majority of cases their huts must have been, like those of most primitive races, of perishable material, such as wood, wattle, skins, turf, and clay. As for their form there was probably a continual conflict between the round and the rectangular plan, just as there was in the stone examples. Which form prevailed in any particular district was probably determined almost by accident. Thus in Sardinia ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... circumspectly through the shrubbery. He was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... palate. She read a good deal of that kind of literature which may be defined as specialism popularised; writing which addresses itself to educated, but not strictly studious, persons, and which forms the reservoir of conversation for society above the sphere of turf and west-endism. Thus, for instance, though she could not undertake the volumes of Herbert Spencer, she was intelligently acquainted with the tenor of their contents; and though she had never opened one of Darwin's books, her knowledge of his main ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... either hunger or thirst. In many parts of the mountain there is no wood, so that travellers in those parts are obliged to use a species of earth which is found there for the purpose of fuel, and which burns very much like turf or peats. In the mountains there are veins of earth of various colours, and mines both of gold and silver, in which the natives are exceedingly conversant, and are even able to melt and purify these metals with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... explored these melancholy ways; here and there I got a glimpse of faded turf, looking like a worn-out bit of carpet, or some appearance of a kitchen garden, the sparse vegetables of which (potatoes, cabbages, and lettuces), would have figured appropriately upon a Lilliputian table. A few sickly ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the storm Now pacified; on them, and on the coves And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded, taking there Their station under a cerulean sky. Oh, 'twas an unimaginable sight! Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf, Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky, Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed, Molten together, and composing thus, Each lost in each, that marvellous array Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge Fantastic ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a new shadow came between her and the sun. Raising her eyes in the expectation of seeing her betrothed, she was not a little surprised to see old Martin instead. Her surprise was not diminished when he took his seat upon the turf beside her, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... forget-me-not. Over the mirror was a cluster of blush-roses she had made. On the wall was a spray of sea-moss she had pressed and surrounded with a garland of small shells. By the door was a vine she had transplanted from the woods; and under a tree opposite was a turf seat where she used to sit sketching the cottage, and Tulee, and Thistle, and baskets of wild-flowers she had gathered. The sight of these things continually brought up visions of the loving and beautiful child, who for so many years had slept nestling in her arms, and made the days tuneful ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... we saw upon the slopes, immense fields of sugar-cane, now grown into a dense mass, five or six feet high, most pleasant to look upon for the delicate green tint of the leaves that belongs to no other plant. The colour of our English turf is beautiful, and so are the tints of our English woods in spring, but our fields of grain have a dull and dingy green compared to the sugar-cane and the young Indian corn. In this beautiful valley we cannot charge the inhabitants ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... camps had been established for the wounded, convalescents, etc. One of these, called the Westphalian camp, presented a most beautiful scene. It was a succession of beautiful small gardens; there a fortress made of turf, its bastions crowned with hortensias; here a plot had been converted into a terrace, its walks ornamented with flowers, like the most carefully tended parterre; on a third was seen a statue of Pallas. The whole barrack ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... buxom English mother. It is a tiny village of a dozen straw-thatched cottages in which I lived. I hear again blackbirds and thrushes in the hedges, and see again bluebells spilling out from the oak woods and over the velvet turf like a creaming of blue water. And most of all I remember a great, hairy-fetlocked stallion, often led dancing, sidling, and nickering down the narrow street. I was frightened of the huge beast and always fled screaming to my mother, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... obeyed, and on reaching the green spot in question, shouted out that he could discern nothing; but presently added, as he moved about, that the turf heaved like a sway-bed beneath his feet, and he thought—to use his own phraseology—would "brast." The abbot then commanded him to go down to the orchard below, and if he could find Demdike to bring ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dryad of a wild rose-tree just rising and looking from her blushing cup, Eve flitted to and fro among them, and, all the time, Luigi's gaze brooded over the scene. Sometimes her shadow fell in the lighted space of turf, and then Luigi went and laid his cheek upon it; it passed, and he returned once more to his hiding-place, and the dark, motionless countenance, with its wandering, glittering eyes, appeared to hang upon the dense leafage that sheltered all the rest of him like a vizard in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... And now the strange, poignant, pathetic, brilliant creature is gone into the night, and the voice is silent that uttered so much excellent discourse; and I am sorry that I did not write to him again. Yet I am glad for him; light lie the turf! The Saturday is the only obituary I have seen, and I thought it very good upon the whole. I should be half tempted to write an In Memoriam, but I am submerged with other work. Are you going to do it? I very much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way beneath. The rainbow-tinted carpet under me was formed of innumerable brilliant-hued wild flowers; it spread about me in every direction, and sloped gracefully to the stream. Game of every kind played on the turf, and bright-hued birds flitted over it. It was a scene no mortal can satisfactorily describe. At such a moment a man, no matter what his creed, sees the hand of the mighty Maker of the universe majestically displayed in the beauty of nature; he becomes sensibly ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bush-whack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's corn-field into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... her profession, Meg Dods, or Meg Dorts, as she was popularly termed, on account of her refractory humours, was still patronised by some steady customers. Such were the members of the Killnakelty Hunt, once famous on the turf and in the field, but now a set of venerable grey-headed sportsmen, who had sunk from fox-hounds to basket-beagles and coursing, and who made an easy canter on their quiet nags a gentle induction ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... bee-hives, which stood above the curve of a white bay, and at one portion of the bay was a small creek, near which a number of large boats, bottom upward, lay on the beach. What odd little dwellings those were! The walls, a few feet high, were built of rude blocks of stone or slices of turf, and from those low supports rose a rounded roof of straw, which was thatched over by a further layer of turf. There were few windows, and no chimneys at all—not even a hole in the roof. And what was meant by the two men who, standing on one of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... man's dwelling with the dust of the valley, he should even take the stroke with calmness and start to the building again. So the Macarthurs, some of them back from their flight before Antrim and Athole, were throng bearing stone from the river and turf from the brae, and setting up those homes of the poor, that have this advantage over the homes of the wealthy, that they are so easily replaced. In this same Carnus, in later years, I have made a meal that showed curiously the resource of its people. Hunting one day, I went to a ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... I tell ye, barrin' the grates, an' 'tisn't grates they are at all, but shtoves. Sure I saw 'em at Pat M'Donagh's as black as twelve o'clock at night, an' no more a sign of a blaze out of 'em than there's light from a blind man's eye; an' 'tisn't turf nor coal they burns, but only wood agin. It's I that wud sooner see the plentiful hearths of ould Ireland, where the turf fire cooks the vittles dacently! Oh wirra! why did we ever ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... heather and ling, shrieking with delight. Wilmet had enough to do to watch over Angela in her toddling, tumbling felicity; while Felix, weighted with Robina on his back, Edgar, Fulbert, Clement, and Lance, ran in and out among the turf; and Alda, demurely walking by her papa, opined that it was 'very odd that the gentleman's ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stopped, and I felt the last foot of turf giving under my feet; I looked down and saw the crack there widening; then in a moment I fell, and a cloud of dust and earth rolled after me; then again their mirth rose into thunder-peals of laughter. But through it all I heard Red ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... where the pomegranate shone amid the white tufts of the cotton-plant; vines, grape-laden, grew up into the branches of the pines; a field of roses bloomed beneath the plane-trees; here and there lilies rocked upon the turf; the paths were strewn with black sand mingled with powdered coral, and in the centre the avenue of cypress formed, as it were, a double colonnade of green obelisks from ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... and fine, and warm, with the delicious warmth which is so utterly different from that dreadful India scald. And father and I are going to turn gardeners, and trot about all day long tending our plants. Did I tell you that we were going to have a garden? Oh yes—a beauty!—with soft turf paths, bordered with roses, and every flower that blooms growing in the borders. We will have an orchard, too, where the spring bulbs come up among the grass; and I've set my heart on a moat. It has been the dream of my life to have a moat. 'Mariquita of the Moated Grange!'... ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... consider. "As you say, the turf is all that is to be desired and the light will suffice. Why not? We get in each other's way confoundedly, and out of doubt will some day have to settle our little difference. Well then, if 'twere done 'twere well ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... possession of her life to make a long fete-day of it. What tender care would I not bestow upon so dear and charming a destiny! Downy would be her nest, warm the sun that shone upon her, sweet the perfumes that surrounded her, soft the breezes that fanned her cheek, green and velvety the turf under her delicate feet! But a truce to such sweet dreams. I know M. de Monbert; what I have seen of him is sufficient. M. de Meilhan, too, will not disappoint me. I shall not conceal myself; in eight days these two men will have found ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... promontory it was very pretty little climbing, over the irregular turf-covered crags that made the ascent; and once up, it was charming. A natural grove of stately old pine-trees, with their glory of tasseled foliage and their breath of perfume, crowned and sheltered it; and ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... yesterday, and neither word nor wittens of the body have been seen or heard tell of; so, according to the course of nature, being a white-headed old man, with a pigtail, when the bargain was made, his dust and bones have, in all likelihood, long ago mouldered down beneath the green turf of his own mountains, like his granfather's before him. This being the case, I daresay it is the reader's opinion as well as my own, that I am quite at liberty to make what use of them I like. Concerning ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... not lack method. He never came two successive nights to the same farm. He never ate where he killed, and he never left a track that betrayed his re-treat. He usually finished up his night's trail on the turf, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and steep, but luckily for me some tree-roots protruded in places, and by their aid I climbed up at last, and stretched myself upon the turf at the top, where I lay, more dead than alive, till the sun was high in the heavens. By that time I was very hungry, but after some searching I came upon some eatable herbs, and a spring of clear water, and much refreshed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... from his own neighborhood. A third part died of smallpox on the way. On the 24th of October, he sighted land; on the 27th, he arrived before Newcastle, in Delaware; on the 28th, he landed. Here he formally received turf and twig, water and soil, in token of his ownership. On the 29th, he entered Pennsylvania. Adding ten days to this date, to bring it into accord with our present calendar, we have November 8 as the day of his arrival in the province. ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... the turf is dark, although you know That, not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... women of title, that are quite high life, sir - the tiptop sort of thing. I know the name of every man who has been out on an affair of honour within the last five-and-twenty years; I know the private particulars of every cross and squabble that has taken place upon the turf, at the gaming-table, or elsewhere, during the whole of that time. I have been called the gentlemanly chronicle. You may consider yourself a lucky dog; upon my soul, you may congratulate yourself, though I ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Disraeli, however, pays in many respects a tribute that is no more than just to the memory of Lord George, and his book affords material for an impartial judgment. At that period the noble lord was a distinguished patron of the turf: all England knew him as a sporting gentleman, a first-rate judge of horses, and an extensive winner on the course. In allusion to his habits in these respects, it became a popular sneer that the Conservatives required ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... knotted old veterans of the forest,—live oaks, sycamore, and tupelo gum trees that had stood in majestic dignity on the banks of the dark and sullen stream for centuries. Sometimes majestic vistas would open; broad avenues carpeted with velvet turf, and walled in by the massive tree trunks, extending from the banks of the stream far back into the country. Again, the stately forests would be replaced by fields of waving corn or rice, with the tops of a row of negro cabins or the columned front ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... flank, all ready for a spring, in case she should see me, and turn round. But she was too busy with the parties in front of her, and at last she made a run. The stout young man pushed the little man towards the cow, and then ran for it. The little one, in his attempt to recoil, fell on the turf, and the cow made at him. I sprang forward, and catching the horn of the animal farthest from me in my right hand, at the same time put my left knee on the horn nearest to me, threw all my weight upon it, so as to turn the animal's nose up in the air, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... development of the sport, exists in the south of France, where a ball is knocked along the roads to a fixed goal. But this is naturally very poor fun compared to the genuine game as played on the short turf beside the grey northern sea on the coast of Fife. Golf has been introduced of late years into England, and is played at Westward Ho, at Wimbledon, at Blackheath (the oldest club), at Liverpool, over Cowley Marsh, near Oxford, and in many other places. It is, therefore, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Soft—yes, it was soft, but the way sand is soft, unyieldingly. Unlike sand, however, it did not suggest a tightlypacked foundation, but rather the firmness of a good mattress resting on a wellmade spring. It was resilient, like carefully tended turf, yet at the same time one thought, not of the solid ground beneath, but of feathers, or even more of buoyant clouds. My parachute having landed me gently on my feet, I sank naturally to my knees, and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and masses of many-storied brick- work for which architecture has yet no proper form and aesthetics no name. The trees and shrubs, all in their young spring green, blew briskly over the guarded turf in the south wind that came up over the water; and in the well-paved alleys the ghosts of eighteenth-century fashion might have met each other in their old haunts, and exchanged stately congratulations upon its vastly bettered condition, and perhaps puzzled a little over ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room (bastofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful, and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household read, or sang, about far-away knights and heroes, and the banquets they gave in splendid halls. In their imagination ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... can ride some," said Kit, looking regretfully after her. Kit could "ride some" himself, and this afternoon he just felt like a good breeze across the turf, and no one suited him for a riding companion like Stella, for she was so fearless and bold, and never balked ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... and lived content: Their names, I think, were Hreimr and Fiosnir, Klur and Kleggi, Kefsir, Fulnir, Drumb, Digraldi, Drott and Hosvir, Lut and Leggialdi. Fences they erected, fields manured, tended swine, kept goats, dug turf. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... character.... Becomes a lover of sick chambers, taking pleasure in receiving dying breaths and laying out the dead. Having her mind full of funeral reminiscences, and possessing more acquaintances beneath the turf ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... reasonable in thinking that the average American would know what she meant. Not one of those eight English people caught even the shadow of her meaning, and when she explained what she meant by "sod your cuts," they said that she meant "turf your cuttings." She replied that "cutting" with us was a greenhouse term and meant a part clipped from a plant or a tree. They said the word "cut" meant a cut of beef or mutton, to which she retorted that we might also use the ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... landscape. There was no moon; all the stars were out. Very far off a whippoorwill was calling incessantly. Once or twice from the little orchard close at hand an apple dropped with a faint rustle of leaves and a muffled, velvety impact upon the turf. Kamiska, wide awake, sat motionless upon her haunches on the steps, looking off into the night, cocking an ear to ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them. Those goats now! Browsing on the blossoms of the bushes they would be, or the herbs that give out a sweet smell. Stir yourself, Staffy, and throw your eye on that turf beyond in the corner. It is that wet you could wring from it splashes and streams. Let you rise the ashes from the sods are on the hearth and redden them with a goosewing, if there is a goosewing to be found. ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... their sharp noses and dug the grass up by the roots. Whole stretches of land that had once been green and beautiful were left bare so that nothing would grow on them for years and years. Cattle do not eat the turf so close as that, and I do not wonder that the vaqueros complained, ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... low long room on the ground-floor, paved with flag-stones, having an immense hearth at one end. Inside the chimney, and on each side of the blazing fire built of logs and turf, were two oak benches, so that six guests could literally sit in the chimney-corner. This recess was made beautiful by blue ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in grasping the two short handles which projected from the long curved shaft, and, summoning all his strength, he tried to move the scythe in the way the mowers were doing. But at the first attempt the sharp point stuck in the turf, and instantly the long handle flew up, turned over, and hit him a hard crack, square between the eyes, that felled ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... priest, Plautius Aelianus, dictated the proper formulae, Helvidius Priscus, the praetor, first consecrated the site by a solemn sacrifice[383] of a pig, a sheep and an ox, and then duly offering the entrails on an altar of turf, he prayed to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, as the guardian deities of the empire, to prosper the enterprise, and by divine grace to bring to completion this house of theirs which human piety had here ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... she might have been seen, stealing cautiously down a dark, narrow flight of stairs, that led to a little postern, which she opened with a key which she drew from her girdle, and, closing it behind her, stepped out on the stretch of short green turf, which ran along one side of the quaint chapel. It was bright moonlight, but she stole behind one of the buttresses that cast heavy shadows on the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... no matter where or when, 'Twas ere the low creation swarm'd with men, That one Prometheus, sprung of heavenly birth (Our author's song can witness), lived on earth. He carved the turf to mould a manly frame, And stole from Jove his animating flame. 20 The sly contrivance o'er Olympus ran, When thus the Monarch of the Stars began: 'Oh versed in arts! whose daring thoughts aspire To kindle clay with never-dying fire! Enjoy ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... accumulation of loose materials indiscriminately thrown together, that we find the ancient moraines presenting any such appearance. Time, which mellows and softens all the wrecks of the past, has clothed them with turf, grassed them over, planted them with trees, sown his seed and gathered in his harvests upon them, until at last they make a part of the undulating surface of the country. Were it not for anticipating my story, I could point out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... they came out on to a level piece of turf surrounded on all sides by high hedges, through which were many openings leading to other parts of the garden, and through one of which they had come. There were trees here and there, the long shadows thrown across the turf, and without absolutely obscuring the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... crop. In nearly all cases the rows are on a level. Where there was once a slanting hillside the Japanese here dig it down or grade it, and the mountainsides are often enormous steps or {25} stairs; one level terrace after another, each held in place by turf ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe |
