"Ploughman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores All with ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... The ploughman's whistle, or the trivial flute, Finds more respect than great Apollo's lute. Quarles's Emblems, B. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... tie rather out of date and already disordered, and his cocked-hat crushed below his arm. His face is bluff and ruddy among his pinched and sallow brethren: that of a big English gentleman, who hunted, shot, or fished, or walked after his whistling ploughman every morning, and on occasions daringly dashed in amongst the poachers by the palings of his park or paddock on summer evenings; yet whose hands were reasonably white and flexible, as if they handled other ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... tramway, in connection with one of which an extraordinary and very remarkable occurrence is reported. People have no objection to touch the rail and receive a smart shock, which is, however, harmless, at least so far. On Thursday evening a ploughman, returning from work, stood upon this rail in order to mount his horse. The rail is elevated on insulators 18 inches above the level of the tramway. As soon as the man placed his hands upon the back of the animal it received a shock, which at once brought it down, and falling against ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... desolation pregnant with the dire lesson of example? The fields had been left uncultivated, weeds and gaudy flowers sprung up,—or where a few wheat-fields shewed signs of the living hopes of the husbandman, the work had been left halfway, the ploughman had died beside the plough; the horses had deserted the furrow, and no seedsman had approached the dead; the cattle unattended wandered over the fields and through the lanes; the tame inhabitants of the poultry ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... ploughman ploughs, the sower sows. The reaper reaps the ear; The woodman to the forest goes Before the day grows clear, But of our toil no fruit we see; The harvest's not for you and me: A robber band has seized the land, And we are ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... a ploughman with his plough; From early until late, Across the field and back again, He ploughed the ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... host. The strange, mythical images of Kr, Eris, and Kudoimos mingle in the crowd. A third space upon the shield depicts the incidents of peaceful labour—the ploughshare passing through the field, of enameled black metal behind it, and golden before; the cup of mead held out to the ploughman when he reaches the end of the furrow; the reapers with their sheaves; the king standing in silent pleasure among them, intent upon his staff. There are the labourers in the vineyard in minutest detail; stakes of silver on which the vines hang; the dark trench about ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... an unbridled Englishman!' Alas! the soldiers who fell under the sword of the Britons are not yet reduced to dust; the laborer, in turning up his fields, still draws from the bosom of the earth their whitened bones, while the ploughman, with tears of tenderness and gratitude, still recollects that his fields, now covered with rich harvests, have been moistened with French blood; while everything around the inhabitants of this country animates them to speak of the tyranny of Great Britain, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull, neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast with our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-quoting ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems incredible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should have been thus forgotten. Even the educated and intelligent, who hold our own opinions and speak in our own words, yet seem to hold them with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and voice of men we hear: Roused from my bed, I speedily ascend 290 The houses' tops, and listening there attend. As flames roll'd by the winds' conspiring force, O'er full-ear'd corn, or torrent's raging course Bears down th'opposing oaks, the fields destroys, And mocks the ploughman's toil, th'unlook'd for noise From neighb'ring hills th'amazed shepherd hears; Such my surprise, and such their rage appears. First fell thy house, Ucalegon! then thine Deiphobus! Sigaean seas did shine Bright with Troy's flames; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... he does not ask for public recognition at the hands of his fellow-citizens. It is the same in the matter of ornamental needlework and gaudy quilts, which goad a man to drink and death. While I am proud to belong to a farmers' club and "change works" with a hearty, whole-souled ploughman like George William Curtis, I hope that at all County Fairs or other intellectual hand-to-hand contests between outdoor orators and other domestic animals, I may be excused, and that when judges ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... yellows the maize, rounds the apple, gilds the orange, sweetens the grape. Again I say, a further service is an added beauty. At all events, where is the diminution? To ripen the beet-root, to water the potato, to increase the yield of lucern, of clover, or of hay; to be a fellow-workman with the ploughman, the vinedresser, and the gardener,—this does not deprive the heavens of one star. Immensity does not despise utility,—and what does it lose by it? Does the vast vital fluid that we call magnetic or electric flash through the cloud-masses with less splendor because it consents ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... as an association, the new and varied duties which devolve upon us and the innumerable demands increasing with the accumulation of means and workers call for a new kind of service in leadership. Political necessity has supplanted the reform epoch; the reapers of the harvest have replaced the ploughman and seed sower, each equally needed in the process of the cultivation and the development of an ideal as in the harvest of the land. When this movement began its pioneers were reformers, people who saw a vision and dreamed dreams of the time when all mankind should be free and all human beings have ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... set his hat, his riding-whip and his gloves and cape behind the door. Then, bareheaded, he took his place on the right hand of his host at the long oaken table, to which in due order came son, daughter, house-maiden, out-lass, ploughman and herd. The only difference was that when it came to the blessing upon the food to be partaken of, Adam the Laird stood up, while the others sat still with bowed heads. Why this was, no one knew, not even Adam or Diarmid. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the little carriage, which was being dragged violently at the pony's heels. She had need of all her spirit. Fortunately, the road was a straight one, but there was not a soul in sight to help her, not a sower in the fields, not a ploughman, not even a boy herding cattle along the road. Her right hand still grasped the useless rein. She stared before her, while the rocking of the little carriage grew more and more violent, and the hedges and trees flew past them. How long would it ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Olive, "I had no idea I could seem clumsy! I feel like a great ploughman. I wish I were ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;—a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;—a Peddler;—a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;—Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their wickedness by Death;—a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been tumbled in a ruinous heap by a pair of skeletons;—a Blind Beggar, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the ploughman, fretting, Homeward plods his weary way Ere his time? He's after getting Shorter ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... drawn indifferently by horses, bullocks, or heifers. Bullocks and heifers are, however, more commonly used than horses, though it is no unusual sight to see a horse and a heifer yoked together. There is no boy to drive; but the ploughman, as in Scotland, at once holds the stilts of the plough, and with his voice, and a long halter, guides the cattle. With respect to the harrows, I saw little difference between them and our English implements, except that those in Germany are lighter, and never have more ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... or our national credit must be destroyed, by showing the public creditors the inability of the nation to repay them their principal money.—Bounties had already been given for recruits which exceeded the year's wages of the ploughman and reaper; and as these were exhausted, and husbandry stood still for want of hands, the manufacturers were next to be tempted to quit the anvil and the loom by higher offers.—France, bankrupt France, had no such calamities impending over her; her distresses were great, but they were immediate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... as before observed, in the dress of the lower orders; but here it is often combined with a fantastic and ludicrous display of finery. An English dairy-maid or chamber-maid, ploughman or groom, shopkeeper or mechanic, has each a dress consistent in its parts, and adapted to the situation and employment of the wearer. But a country girl in France, whose bed-gown and petticoat are of the coarsest materials, and scantiest dimensions, has a pair of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... my ploughman lad, And hey my merry ploughman; Of a' the trades that I do ken, Commend me ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an earthy flavour throughout from its Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars; while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their bones ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones. Somehow or other I find the strain which Handel has wedded to the words "There the ploughman near at hand," has got into my head and there is no getting it out again. How marvellously ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... wots to turn the pen, Or bookman skills to guide the ploughman's cart; Nor can the cobbler count the terms of art, Nor base men judge the thoughts of ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... have come to you with a request. You have heard, of course, already. . . . There is a suspicion that your brother has somehow been murdered. God's will, you know. . . . Death no one can escape, neither Tsar nor ploughman. Can you not assist us with some fact, something that ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... men report Lean, dusk, a gipsy: I alone nut-brown. Violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart, Yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown. As goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat, And cranes the ploughman, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... which are grand and beautiful; and lets them, by his songs, into some of the realities"? Emerson yearns that "the old forgotten splendors of the Universe should glow again for us," and "A.E." believes that we at times attain "the high ancestral Self"; his restless ploughman, "walking through the woodland's purple" under ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Mass. Ploughman: Farm accounts, even when kept in the most simple form, not only afford great satisfaction, but they do much to aid the farmer in his efforts to success. If at the end of the season he is able to strike the balance, and thus learn the cost of his principal crops, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... and nails can be hammered, bill-hooks can be wielded and faggots chopped, no matter what the inward care. The ploughman is deeply in debt, poor fellow, but he can, and does, follow the plough, and finds, perhaps, some solace in the dull monotony of his labour. Clods cannot feel. A sensitive mind and vivid imagination—a delicately-balanced ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... Peter wears a huge greatcoat threadbare and patched itself, yet carefully so disposed and secured by what buttons remain, and many supplementary pins, as to conceal the still more infirm state of his under garments. The shoes and stockings of a ploughman were, however, seen to meet at his knees with a pair of brownish, blackish breeches; a rusty-coloured handkerchief, that has been black in its day, surrounded his throat, and was an apology for linen. His hair, half grey, half black, escaped in elf-locks around a huge wig, made of tow, as ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... excellent and of great vse, I will knit them in one, and write, my full opinion of them, for their choise in our seede. You shall know then that when you goe into the market to chuse Barly for your seede, you shall to your best power elect that which is whitest, fullest, and roundest, being as the ploughman calles it, a full bunting Corne, like the nebbe or beake of a Bunting, you shall obserue that it be all of one Corne, and not mingled, that is, clay Barly, and sand Barly together, which you shall distinguish by these differences: the clay Barly ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... a ploughman's rugged face, Or painted eyes in Piccadilly; But bowler hats are commonplace, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... him to the farmer, by whom, since he had no wits for anything better, he was set to pull at waggon and plough just as if he were a cart-horse; and, indeed, he was almost as strong as one. To make him work, carter and ploughman used to crack their whips over his back; and Little Toonie took it as the most natural thing in the world, because his brain was full of moonshine, so that he understood nothing clearly ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... sycamore bud swells and opens, and takes the eye instantly in the still dark wood; the starlings go to the hollow pollards; the lambs leap in the mead. You never know what a day may bring forth—what new thing will come next. Yesterday I saw the ploughman and his team, and the earth gleam smoothed behind the share; to-day a butterfly has gone past; the farm-folk are bringing home the fagots from the hedgerows; to-morrow there will be a merry, merry note in the ash copse, the chiffchaffs' ringing call to arms, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... mother did not forget to wash my hands and feet, and plaster up my lacerated flesh; and as soon as she had made me comfortable I retired to rest. I rose refreshed, and returned the next day with renovated vigour to my task. To be brief, I soon because a good ploughman. My father daily witnessed with considerable anxiety my zealous and persevering exertions; and as I proceeded, he encouraged me by the most animating hopes of future prospects; he informed me that he had remarked with no small pleasure my determination to excel in every ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... pounds in sugar-plums? To be talked of—how poor a desire! Does it matter whether it be by the gossips of this age or the next? Some men are urged on to fame by poverty—that is an excuse for their trouble; but there is no more nobleness in the motive than in that which makes yon poor ploughman sweat in the eye of Phoebus. In fact, the larger part of eminent men, instead of being inspired by any lofty desire to benefit their species or enrich the human mind, have acted or composed, without any definite object beyond the satisfying a restless appetite for excitement, or indulging the dreams ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truly can, but he wants to be fed as if his stomach needed more food than ordinary stomachs, which it does not. A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman. But the rascal of a painter, poet, novelist, or other voluptuary in labor, is not content with his advantage in popular esteem over the ploughman; he also wants an advantage in money, as if there were more hours in a day ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... lakes and fountains, from th' infected air "Contagion suck'd; millions of vipers swarm'd "In our uncultur'd fields, our running streams "Tainting with poison. First the sudden plague "Its power display'd, on sheep, on dogs, on fowls, "Cattle, and forest beasts with deadly power. "The hapless ploughman, wondering, at his work "Sees his strong oxen in the furrow sink. "The woolly flocks with sickly bleatings waste "In body, while their wool spontaneous falls. "The steed so fiery, on the dusty plain "So fam'd, the palm contemns; and all despis'd "His ancient honors, at his manger ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground? No,—but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... imagine). Or else he wished he were the abbot's huntsman, hunting in the forest; or a monk of St Germain, singing sweetly in the abbey church; or a merchant, taking bales of cloaks and girdles along the high road to Paris; anything, in fact, but a poor ploughman ploughing other people's land. An Anglo-Saxon writer has ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... and rode again to the camp. The evening was particularly fine: the sun, hidden behind some thick fleecy clouds, had thrown around a mild and pleasing tint; the birds were every where singing their evening song; the ploughman was 'whistling o'er the lea;' and nature, after the labours of the day, was preparing for her wonted rest. It was a fit time for meditation, prayer, and praise. Such an evening, perhaps, as that which led the patriarch of old to meditation, ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... would mention that more than once, and especially a few minutes after the main occurrence, he could not help fancying that someone was breathing in his face. The Rev. E. F. Stark-Potter had heard, several times, a sound like "Woe, woe," which he attributed at first to some ploughman calling to his horses; subsequent inquiry had proved, however, that, on the day in question, no ploughing was being done in the neighbourhood. All the witnesses concurred in the statement that they were vividly conscious of something wrong, the most emphatic in this respect being the Undergraduate, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Englishman.—Alas! the soldiers who fell under the sword of the Britons are not yet reduced to dust: the labourer in turning up his field, still draws from the bosom of the earth their whitened bones; while the ploughman, with tears of tenderness and gratitude, still recollects that his fields, now covered with rich harvests, have been moistened with French blood. While every thing around the inhabitants of this country animates them to speak of the tyranny of Great Britain, and of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Mustard; Give me Apple's Soap, with the negress laving the cherub; Give me Bentley's Brimstone Tablets, and Ploughman's Pills—those of the Little Liver. (O get me ads., you agent with the frock-coat and the fountain pen, You with the large commissions And the further discount on cash, Get me ads., camarado! Full pages preferred, though little ones not scorning, For ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... think very noticeable, that the places where people hurry most—as for instance the City of London or Wall Street, New York—are just the places where the work being done is of LEAST importance (being mostly money-gambling); whereas if you go and look at a ploughman ploughing—doing perhaps the most important of human work—you find all his movements most deliberate and leisurely, as if indeed he had infinite time at command; the truth being that in dealing (like a ploughman) with ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... peasant carrying game at this very palace, is habited precisely in the modern dress, and shews how very little change has yet been made. The shoes of the low fellows too particularly attract my notice: they exactly resemble the ancient ones, and when Persius mentions his ploughman peronatus arator, one sees he ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... lower end of Ayton village. The family were of that "strict, not strictest species of Presbyterian Dissenter," and John attended also the Bible-class and Fellowship Meeting. The family of John Murray, a ploughman or "hind" from the Duns district, and now settled at Bastleridge, the next farm to Ayton Hill, also attended Mr. Ure's church. An intimacy sprang up between the two families. It ripened into affection between John Cairns and Alison, John Murray's only daughter, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... John Ploughman's Talk, says the author, Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, the famous London preacher, "has not only obtained an immense circulation, but it has exercised an influence for good." As to the "influence for good," the reader ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of men," she said, "have come from the very lowest ranks of life. There was Burns, a ploughman; and Hugh Miller, a stonemason; and plenty of others. Dodsley was ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... River, gentle River! gliding on In silence underneath the starless sky! Thine is a ministry that never rests Even while the living slumber. For a time The meddler, man, hath left the elements In peace; the ploughman breaks the clods no more; The miner labors not, with steel and fire, To rend the rock, and he that hews the stone, And he that fells the forest, he that guides The loaded wain, and the poor animal That drags it, have forgotten, for a time, Their toils, and share the quiet of the earth. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... country, of however mixed ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the ploughman, and thews and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest." So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the more ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... appearance of being asleep. Early next morning, with his terror still on him, he told what he had heard to his brother, and by and by, unable to keep the dreadful secret, they related it to someone—a carter or ploughman on the farm. He in turn told the farmer, who at once gave information, and in a short time the man and woman were arrested. In due time they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged in the parish where the crime had ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... unsuitable food. By unsuitable food, we mean not so much food that is bad in itself, but rather that which is not suited to the temperament or work of the eater, or to the climate and circumstances in which he finds himself. A ploughman or fisherman, for example, may thrive on diet which will inevitably produce disease in the system of one whose work confines him to the house for the most of his time. One condition of a healthy ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... the family are coming too; and that they are so nobly attended, they care not a fig for anybody. Sir, they have added two cart-horses to the four old geldings, because my lady will have it said she came to town in a coach and six—heavy George the ploughman rides postilion. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... wretch not to like your "Ploughman"[39] as well as usual. There is always poetry in your things, but TO ME the spirit of this one has not quite that reality which is the highest virtue of "a sentiment"—or at least its greatest strength. But I may ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... going to tell you all about it. First, there's a gentleman who takes a rifle for a fowling-piece. Next, there's a farmer who warns everybody, gentleman and beggar, off his premises. Next, there's a tinker and a ploughman, who think that God is always fighting with the devil which shall command the kingdoms of the earth. The tinker's for God, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all ages, especially in this last century of years, by people of all sorts, though never so mean and mechanical; every man strains his fortune to keep his children at school; the cobbler will clout it till midnight, the porter will carry burdens till his bones crack again, the ploughman will pinch both back and belly to give his son learning, and I find that this ambition reigns no where so much as in this island. But, under favour, this word, learning, is taken in a narrower sense among us than among other nations: we seem to restrain it only to the book, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... from which he was receiving large monthly dividends. If that went on prosperously, perhaps he need not return to the colony at all. 'Poor Dick Shand!' he said. 'He is a shepherd far away in the west, hardly earning better wages than an English ploughman, and I am coming home with a pocket full of money! A few glasses of whisky have made all ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... I smoked a pipe And havered with a black-haired cowman, Grey-eyed, in that fine Celtic type, As much the poet as the ploughman— "Seems kind of lucky here," said I; "The very ducklings look more downy Than others do." He grinned: "An' why? May happen, Sir, we feeds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... on him as a ninny, and they persuaded him to prove to them that his whip was a real whip by letting Tom Bryan do the whipping for him. Tom Bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for him—a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his authority in the ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door—it may be by a man-driven motor-car! ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... THIS ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: "At Mrs. Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he, "I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond "The Drover," a hundred spot the down In Wiltshire. And ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... Plymley in fits—all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four times over. But it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled.... But whatever was our conduct—if every ploughman was as great a hero as he who was called from his oxen to save Rome from her enemies—I should still say that, at such a crisis, you want the affections of all your subjects in both islands. There is no spirit which you must alienate, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... in the ditch, jogging from side to side like an old ploughman coming home from work. He never said a word the whole way; and I was thrown for talk on the cabin-boy. He told me his name was Ransome, and that he had followed the sea since he was nine, but could not say how old he was, as ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... King Arthur, Merlin, the most learned enchanter of his time, was on a journey; and being very weary, stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife, with great civility, immediately brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a wooden platter. Merlin could not help observing, that although everything within the cottage was particularly neat and clean, and in good ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... I am quite ready to admit that there are all sorts of inconsistencies in me. Now, the other day I was reading Burns, and I couldn't describe what exaltation all at once possessed me in the thought that a ploughman had so glorified a servant-girl that together they shine in the highest heaven, far above all the monarchs of earth. This came upon me with a rush—a very ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... friends have laughed at it." I am not one of those people, Mr. Bertram, who aim at finding out the ridiculous in what is sincerely and honestly averred. "Well, then, I'll tell thee: One day I was very busy in holding my plough (for thee seest that I am but a ploughman) and being weary I ran under the shade of a tree to repose myself. I cast my eyes on a daisy, I plucked it mechanically and viewed it with more curiosity than common country farmers are wont to do; and observed therein very many ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... his saw, and he made a plough. When the plough was made he put a hole in the beam of it, and got the lion to go in under the plough so that he might see if he was any good as a ploughman. He placed the lion's tail in the hole he had made for it, and then clapped in a peg, and the lion was not able to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... Ottawa, beyond the Cascades of Carillon and the Chute a Blondeau, the keen-eyed voyageur catches its gleam, and, for gladness to be nearing the familiar mountain, more cheerily raises the chanson he loves. Near St. Placide the early ploughman—while yet mist wreathes the fields and before the native Rossignol has fairly begun his plaintive flourishes—watches the high cross of Rigaud for the first glint that shall tell him of the yet unrisen sun. The wayfarer marks ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... together we labour, together we suffer, together we rejoice. The motive, however, was not social, but religious. "It is nothing," said Spangenberg himself, "but love to the Lamb and His Church." For this cause the ploughman tilled the soil, the women sewed, the joiner sawed, the blacksmith plied his hammer; for this cause the fond mothers, with tears in their eyes, handed over their children to the care of guardians, so that they ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... cost in England, immediately makes his purchase, settles, and begins his operations. Here his eyes are soon opened. He must send to England for all his implements; and even then his French labourers neither can or will learn the use of them. An English ploughman becomes necessary; the English ploughman accordingly comes, but shortly becomes miserable amongst ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... books, before he can take his wind again to return to his story! I never met with such a transcriber in all my days; for want of matter to fill up a vacuum, of which his book was in much danger, he hath set down the story of Westminster, as long as the Ploughman's Tale in Chaucer, which to the reader would have been more pertinent and pleasant. I wonder he did not transcribe bills of Chancery, especially about a tedious suit my father had for several years about a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... men learnt for the first time what French billets were like and experienced the insanitary conditions prevailing on the small farms and the draughty and dirty barns. Looking around the countryside all seemed quiet and peaceful. The ploughman ploughed the fields, others sowed and the miners went to their daily tasks as usual. At times it was difficult to realise that the firing line was within a few miles, but the boom of the distant guns and the laden Red ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... fables, than that minds that can only produce Talmuds should have conceived such fictions as the Gospel. I could as soon believe that some dull chronicler of the Middle Ages composed Shakspeare's plays, or a ploughman had written Paradise Lost; only that, to parallel the present case, we ought to believe that four ploughmen wrote four Paradise Losts! Nay, I said, I would as soon believe that most laughable theory of learned folly, that the monks of the Middle Ages compiled all ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... in hand, Counting his changes, each did stand; While rang and trembled every stone, To music by the bell-mouths blown: Till the bright clouds that towered on high Seemed to re-echo cry with cry. Still swang the clappers to and fro, When, in the far-spread fields below, I saw a ploughman with his team Lift to the bells and fix on them His distant eyes, as if he would Drink in the utmost sound he could; While near him sat his children three, And in the green grass placidly Played undistracted on, as if What music earthly bells might give Could only faintly stir ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... crowning of all was reserved for the end. It was no farce at the time, and kept our heads down at the water edge for many a day. I was just driving the hot goose along the seams of a Sunday jacket I was finishing for Thomas Clod the ploughman, when the Englisher came in at the shop door, whistling "Robert Adair," and "Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," and whiles, maybe, churming to himself like a young blackbird;—but I have not patience to go through with it. The long and the short of the matter, however, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and the young lord, having given the sheriff his grey charger to my ploughman to carry the corpse, which had been laid across the horse's neck, to Coserow, the young lord got into the cart by us, but did not seat himself beside my child, but backward by my dear gossip: moreover, he ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... an acre in extent, and, after carefully preparing the soil, planted grain or vegetables. Their method of ploughing was primitive indeed. Six or eight men were attached by ropes to a strong stake, to which was fastened a horizontal piece of wood upon which the ploughman might set his foot to force the sharp point into the earth as it was dragged along, while women followed after to break up the clods as ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... make any one lose patience," said Mowbray, "to hear her quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his dinner, or without his usual potation of ale. His comrades would cry 'poor fellow!' and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... brother. Truth it is, after many days Cain and Abel offered sacrifice and gifts unto God. It is to be believed that Adam taught his sons to offer to God their tithes and first fruits. Cain offered fruits, for he was a ploughman and tiller of earth, and Abel offered milk and the first of the lambs, Moses saith, of the fattest of the flock. And God beheld the gifts of Abel, for he and his sacrifices were acceptable to our Lord; and as to Cain his ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... with a very dainty moving of the shoulders. "Of these I am weary this day, and so I inflict myself on the dragoon," and here she bowed very low and gracefully to the ploughman, and there was a little devilry ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... no doubt, as it was wanted. Achilles contemplates that some of the rich fields of his friends may be exceedingly remote, so that it would be a great thing to spare the ploughman a journey to the nearest blacksmith. And no doubt the powerful men of the community would, by means of their slaves or retainers, acquire additional wealth by reclaiming lands out of the way and therefore ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... all utterly; but he ran out and gave chase to Tom. The old steward opened the park gate in such a hurry, that he hung up his pony's chin upon the spikes, and, for aught I know, it hangs there still; but he jumped off, and gave chase to Tom. The ploughman left his horses at the headland, and one jumped over the fence, and pulled the other into the ditch, plough and all; but he ran on, and gave chase to Tom. Sir John looked out of his study window (for he was an early old gentleman) and up at the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... directs them to the Knight as the person who would be likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their order. After the Host follow the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer, the Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the Poor Parson, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reeve comes ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... building ships, and women cooking meals, The mothering girl-child with her doll in arms, The ploughman trudging at his horse's heels, The fires we lay, our chill at war's alarms:— These epic, ancient gestures of the race Have still the greatness of those great who wrought In other days than ours, who keep their place Along ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... lords. His rough and ready courtship of the French princess is a good deal expanded as to length, but (if I dare say so) less improved and heightened in tone than we might well have wished and it might well have borne; in either text the Hero's addresses savour rather of a ploughman than a prince, and his finest courtesies are clownish though not churlish. We may probably see in this rather a concession to the appetite of the groundlings than an evasion of the difficulties inherent in the subject-matter ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... live on animals, is like double distilled spirits, and so requires much labor to break, grind, and digest it. And, indeed, if day-laborers, and handicraftsmen were allowed the high, strong food of men of condition, and the quiet and much-thinking persons were confined to the farmer and ploughman's food, it would be much happier ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... surroundings, ignorance, and lack of most that distinguishes civilization from that childlike simplicity of primaeval life which Macaulay regards as the more favorable to developing poetical temperament, Carlyle says of the ploughman-poet: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... slope. As when, Some father, absent long, returns at last, His children rush loud-voiced from field to house, And cling about his knees; and they that mark— Old reaper, bent no more, with hook in hand, Or ploughman, leaning 'gainst the old blind horse— Beholding wonder not; so to that grave Rushed they; so clung. Around that grave ere long Their own were ranged. That plague which smote the sire Spared not his sons. With ministering hand From ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... addition to these books, The Hill of Venus, as stated on p. 38, was in preparation. Among works that Mr. Morris had some thought of printing may also be mentioned The Bible, Gesta Romanorum, Malory's Morte Darthur, The High History of the San Graal (translated by Dr. Sebastian Evans), Piers Ploughman, Huon of Bordeaux, Caxton's Jason, a Latin Psalter, The Prymer or Lay Folk's Prayer-Book, Some Mediaeval English Songs and Music, The Pilgrim's Progress, and a Book of Romantic Ballads. He was engaged on the selection of the Ballads, which he spoke of as the finest poems ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... the -jugerum-, "yoking," were, like the German "morgen," not measures of surface, but measures of labour; the latter denoting the day's work, the former the half-day's work, with reference to the sharp division of the day especially in Italy by the ploughman's rest ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... be missed in a week after they have gone; and, with {92} regard to particulars, there is not a great banker that breaks who does not distress more people than the disgrace or retirement of the greatest minister that ever presided in a Cabinet; nor is there a deceased ploughman who leaves a wife and a dozen brats behind him that is not lamented with greater sincerity, as well as a loss to more individuals, than any statesman that ever wore a head or deserved to lose it." There is a good deal of wholesome, although perhaps somewhat melancholy, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... loves, the hopes, and the fears of his own bosom. Had a summer sun risen on a winter morning, it could not have surprised the Lowlands of Scotland more than this Kilmarnock volume surprised and delighted the people, one and all. The milkmaid sang his songs, the ploughman repeated his poems; the old quoted both, and ever the devout rejoiced that idle verse had at last mixed a tone of morality with its mirth. The volume penetrated even into Nithsdale. "Keep it out of the way of your children," said a Cameronian divine, when ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical demands of the expert ploughman. The most familiar example of beauty indicating subtle technique is supplied by the admired shape of boats, which, however, is so variable (the statement is made on the authority of an old coast-guardsman) that the boat best adapted for one stretch of shore may be dangerous, if not entirely ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of all Italy. Devotion to the Mother of God, and the love of retreat, had induced Francis to ask for this place; and it was given him by those who were its proprietors. The first time he went there, he lost his way, with his companion, and asked a ploughman to take him to the valley. "What," says the man, "shall I leave my plough and lose my time, to serve you?" However, he took him to the place, mollified by Francis' mildness, and by his promising him that he should be no loser by so doing: on returning, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... are willing to make the concession. But oh, Dora!" appealed Annie, who had talked herself wide awake by this time, "don't forget the loss of position involved in really keeping a shop, however eccentric and meritorious a man's intentions may be. Why, he had better become a stonemason or a ploughman, if he is to do the thing at all; far better a gamekeeper or a soldier in time of war, the plunge would be deeper but more picturesque. Think of the entire breaking with the county with which we have a right to hold ourselves connected, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... forest-pine. Hence, too, not idly do we watch the stars- Their rising and their setting-and the year, Four varying seasons to one law conformed. If chilly showers e'er shut the farmer's door, Much that had soon with sunshine cried for haste, He may forestall; the ploughman batters keen His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand, Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands Amerian for the bending vine prepare. Now let the pliant basket plaited be Of bramble-twigs; ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... which makes the heart beat and the breath come quicker, love and hate, and joy and sorrow—that has been to me as worthy of record as his hopes of a future life. The thoughts that come into the mind of the ploughman while he leads his team afield in the golden glory of the dawn; the dreams that swell and move in the heart of the woman when she knows the great mystery of a new life; whither the dying man's hopes and fears are led—these have seemed to me the religion of the people as well as doctrines of the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... request he told me his story. He is of Scotch parentage; and who knows but he may be akin to the ploughman-poet whose "arrowy songs still sing in our morning air"? He was born and bred in Burlington, New Jersey. A shoemaker by trade, he became a soldier by choice, and fought the British in what used to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... hope we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer: the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance: the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... was fond of me; he loved originality in any shape. His great recreation, after the fatigue of business, was stealing into the country, entering a clean cottage, where there was a tidy woman and a nicely-scoured table, and there he would eat bread and cheese like any ploughman. He detested routs, and always sat down to plain dinners. He never ate before he went to the House; but when any thing important was to be discussed, he was in the habit of taking a glass of port wine with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... doth deface, Doth deface Lady Ceres' crown, And the tillage doth go to decay, To decay in every town; Landlords their rents so highly enhance, That Pierce, the ploughman, barefoot may dance; Well a day! Farmers that Christmas would still entertain, Scarce have wherewith themselves to ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... just as good; but, d'ye see, as some day or other I suppose he will have to go on shore for a spell, he'd be just like a fish out of water if he has never been before—not know what to do with hisself any more than a bear in a china shop, or a ploughman ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... by the methods that he is pursuing, King James brings himself into deeper hatred. This hatred is spreading. It was the business of myself and those others to help it on, until from the cottage of the ploughman the infection of anger should have spread to the mansion of the squire. Had Your Grace but given me time, as I entreated you, and as you promised me, you might have marched to Whitehall with scarce the shedding of a drop of ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... escaped from the galleys, and is represented as a patriot of the most sublime principles; in another, he is the virtuous conductor of a gang of banditti; and the principal character in a third, is a ploughman turned deist and politician. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... godlike soul of the universe, struck him with something like wonderment. He first began to look upon Clare as a sort of phenomenon; but found that the more he studied him, the more incomprehensible, yet also the more admirable, appeared this great and lofty spirit, wrapped in the coarse garb of a ploughman and lime-burner. The odd, tender-hearted doctor soon conceived a passionate affection for Clare, and set him up as a hero at the shrine of his devotion. He thought of nothing else but advancing his young friend's welfare, and worked with great zeal to this effect; to such ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. The change was most noticeable ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies |
