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More "Thistle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cross between a split-saw and a bull-thistle to umpire this muster?" shouted the foreman of the Ancients, to the amazement of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... poverty, partly no doubt from consideration, they seemed to be much forgotten. The family was like an old thistle-head, withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. All the summer through not a single visitor, friend or stranger, had slept in the house. A fresh face was more of a wonder to Cosmo than to desert-haunting Abraham. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... general rule the mainsprings of character develop early, and the man is very much as the child has made him. The sowing then, brings forth a harvest afterwards. They tell us, that two natives of Scotland settled in the far West, and that each took with him a memorial of his fatherland—one the thistle, the national emblem, the other the honey-bee. Rather different sowing that! For while the dwellers on the Pacific coast have to keep up a continual fight with the thistle, the honey of that region is now largely exported, and is worth its millions. A little time ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... while the grasshopper sang out shrill In the grass beneath the blanching thistle, And the afternoon air, with a tender thrill, Harked to the ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... since) the now universal potato was unknown, but which were stored with gigantic plants of KALE or colewort, encircled with groves of nettles, and exhibited here and there a huge hemlock, or the national thistle, overshadowing a quarter of the petty enclosure. The broken ground on which the village was built had never been levelled; so that these enclosures presented declivities of every degree, here rising like terraces, there sinking like tan-pits. The dry-stone walls which ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... observation an entire day, were seen to convey to their young no less than forty grubs an hour, an average exceeding three thousand in the course of a week. Moreover, even in the autumn he does not confine himself to grain, but feeds on various seeds, such as the dandelion, the sow-thistle, and the groundsel; all of which plants are classed as weeds. It has been known, also, to chase and devour the common white butterfly, whose caterpillars make ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... Can make thee stoop thy royal head, And lay thee prostrate with the dead. In vain colossal England mows, With ponderous strength, the yielding foes; In vain fair Scotia, by her side, With courage flushed and Highland pride, Whirls her keen blade with horrid whistle And lops off heads like tops of thistle; In vain brave Erin, famed afar, The flaming thunderbolt of war, Profuse of life, through blood does wade, To lend her sister kingdom aid: Our conquering thunders vainly roar Terrific round the Gallic shore; Profoundest statesmen vainly scheme— 'Tis all a vain, delusive dream, If ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... you will say, is being pert about politics when you would rather have anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain; but with blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a thistle in the hedge to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of. Our plans have floated round and round, in and out of all the bays and creeks of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... finding a stray Boche, or encountering a Boche patrol. In front of Essarts the lines were so far apart that there was plenty of room for a small pitched battle, and night after night Lieuts. Pearson, Creed, Poynor, and others visited such familiar haunts as the "Osier Bed," "Thistle Patch," "Lonely Tree," and other well-known places. The first to meet the enemy was Lieut. Pearson, who came upon a small party in the "Thistle Patch," who made off rapidly back to their lines. Our patrol ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... bathe, sith, sithe, both, both, loath, loath, oath, oathes, smith, smithy, breath, of, off, then, yet, liveth or liveth, joth or joth, mouth, mouth, path or path, wrath, wreath, faith or faith, thy, thigh, this, thistle, thou, thousand, thank, they, them, theame, thus, thunder, thine, thin, goal or goal, as afore, motion, crimson, action, Acteon, singed, hanged, changed, shepherd, Shaphat, dishonour, asham'd, bishop, mishap, character, charity, duckherd, blockhead, Dutchess, gather, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... motion makes one think of the grace of young girls, daintily costumed, in robes with long fluttering sleeves... And old Japanese proverb declares that even a devil is pretty at eighteen: Oni mo jiu-hachi azami no hana: "Even a devil at eighteen, flower-of-the-thistle." ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... spares neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of wild rush-beds and sloughs' squashy traces, Grounds of rough fallows with thistle and weed. Flats and low valleys of kingcups and daisies, Sweetest of subjects are ye for my reed: Ye commons left free in the rude rags of nature, Ye brown heaths beclothed in furze as ye be, My wild eye in rapture adores every ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... first Set mortals on with tools to turn the sod, When now the awful groves 'gan fail to bear Acorns and arbutes, and her wonted food Dodona gave no more. Soon, too, the corn Gat sorrow's increase, that an evil blight Ate up the stalks, and thistle reared his spines An idler in the fields; the crops die down; Upsprings instead a shaggy growth of burrs And caltrops; and amid the corn-fields trim Unfruitful darnel and wild oats have sway. Wherefore, unless thou shalt with ceaseless rake The weeds pursue, with shouting scare ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... feet 9 inch in length; the staff is very plain, but the pommel is ornamented with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. The fleurs-de-lis with which this sceptre was originally adorned have been replaced by golden leaves, bearing the rose, shamrock, and thistle. The cross is variously jewelled, and has in the centre a large ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... of the almost incredible power of multiplication of an animal or plant when taken into a new environment, removed from conditions which held it in check, as the introduction of the mongoose into Jamaica, the rabbit into Australia, the thistle into New South Wales and ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... light, and then escorted the ladies home. But Thumbelina could not sleep that night; so she got out of bed, and plaited a great big blanket of straw, and carried it off, and spread it over the dead bird, and piled upon it thistle-down as soft as cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, so that the poor little ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... away, pulled up an iron-weed growing on the road-side, and fell to whipping a large purple thistle. Her thirst grew; she left the thistle and fell to whipping the rank grass. Then was heard an angry buzz, as the assaulted bees swarmed out of their ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... amusement while unprovided with a partner. The nest of the Hemp-bird is made of cotton, the down of the fern, and other soft materials, woven together with threads and the fibres of bark, and lined with thistle-down, if it be late enough to obtain it, and sometimes with cow's hair. It is commonly placed in the fork of the slender branches of a maple, linden, or poplar, and is fastened to them with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... my Lord of Glandine, Thistle-eaters the stoutest gave way, Outdone in their own special line By the forty-ass ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hills o' the cromlech and cairn, Where blossoms the thistle by hillocks o' fern; There Freedom in triumph an altar has made For holiest rites in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... how am I so far Out of that minute? Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whenever light winds blow, Fixed by no ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... fell, and rolled into hollows rich in mulcted earth; parachutes, buoyed on thistle silk, sailed from distant jungle plants; every swirl of breeze brought spores of lichens and moss, and even the retreating water unwittingly aided, having transported hither and dropped a cargo of living things, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant strugglers for survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to found fresh colonies afar. Children delight in making pompons for their hats by removing the silky seed-tufts from pods before they burst, and winding them, one by one, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... little white thistle moon Blown over the cold crags and fens: A little white thistle moon Blown across the ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... of glossy green leaves, which the moisture of the night had ornamented with shimmering edges of crystal beads. She found the phantom of the night before browsing among flowers behind the cottage, and very kindly disposed to make her acquaintance. As he had a thistle blossom sticking out of his mouth, she forthwith named him Thistle. She soon returned to the house with her apron full of vines, and blossoms, and prettily tinted leaves. "See, Tulee," said she, "what a many flowers! I'm going to make haste and dress the table, before Gerald ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... continent; how the so-called wild-oat (Avena sterilis of the Old World) has taken full possession of California; how that cattle and horses, introduced by the Spaniard, have spread as widely and made themselves as much at home on the plains of La Plata as on those of Tartary; and that the cardoon-thistle-seeds, and others they brought with them, have multiplied there into numbers probably much exceeding those extant in their native lands; indeed, when we contemplate our own race, and our particular stock, taking such recent but dominating possession of this New World; when we ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... by the early train, Whirl down with shriek and whistle, 50 And feel the bluff North blow again, And mark the sprouting thistle Set up on waste patch of the lane Its green and ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... But he has the mobility of the poetic nature, and the sad ground-tone is often drowned in the ecstasy of lighter notes. All at once the "bare ruined choirs" are covered with the glad light-green of spring. His genius combined the excellencies of many masters. His "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the Rose" are allegorical poems, full of colour, fancy, and music. His "Two Married Women and the Widow" has a good deal of Chaucer's slyness and humour. "The Dance of the Deadly Sins," with its fiery bursts of imaginative energy, its pictures finished at a stroke, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... cut the plant, and carried it into his own house; stripped the leaves off it and cut up the stalk; and there came a thick, white juice out of it, as there comes out of the sow-thistle when it is bruised, except that the juice was more ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... and noxious weed, from the name there given it of Fico del inferno, or the Devil's Fig: it has long been introduced to this country; GERARD, who cultivated it with success, ludicrously attributes its nickname to a different source: "The golden Thistle of Peru, called in the West-Indies, Fique del inferno, a friend of mine brought it unto me from an iland there, called Saint Johns Iland, among other seedes, what reason the inhabitants there have to call it so it is unto me unknown, unless it be bicause of his fruite, which ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... Ambialet, its rocks and ruins on which the wild pinks nodded, and its stone-covered roofs overgrown with white sedum. I was struck by the number of prickly plants on the sandy banks of the Tarn. Those which now made the best show of bloom were the star-thistle centaurea and ononis repens. The appearance of this last was very curious, for in addition to its pink pea-blossoms it seemed to be sprinkled over with little flowers the colour of forget-me-nots. These, however, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... it old man," laughed Gething. At a signal Cuddy flew at it, rose into the air with magnificent strength and landed like thistle-down. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... felt a change in her, from the beginning of their talk. Why had she sent for him? The wildest notions had possessed him, ever since her letter reached him. Yet, now that he saw her, they seemed to float away from him, like thistle-down on ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... friends, of good name, of country—he is even without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed; with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... reflection. "I wonder if she was different from all the other women I've known?" Through her mind there passed swiftly a hundred memories of her childhood. First there came the one vivid recollection of her mother, a flashing, graceful figure, as light as thistle-down, in a skirt of spangled tulle that stood out from her knees. The face Patty could not remember, but the spangles were indelibly impressed on her mind, the spangles and a short silver wand, with a star on the end of it, which that fairy-like figure ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the fierce young Norman, and, breaking off the conversation, switched savagely at the head of a thistle close at ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... friend," said Pierre gravely; "in the vegetable world I prefer a rose to a thistle; in the moral world, I prefer you to Trecoeur. You were born a gallant fellow; I rejoice at it, and I ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... before us had been one of the great fertile valleys of France, dotted with little grey towns with glowing red roofs. For as we looked it seemed to be "that ominous tract, which all agree hides the Dark Tower!" There it all lay; the "ragged thistle stalk," with its head chopped off; "the dock's harsh swart leaves bruised as to balk all hope of greenness." "As for the grass, it grew scantier than hair in leprosy; thin dry leaves pricked the mud, which underneath looked kneaded up with blood!" It was the self-same ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... The lustre of the season begins to dim, the foliage of the trees and woods to tarnish, the plumage of the birds to fade, and their songs to cease. The hints of approaching fall are on every hand. How suggestive this thistle-down, for instance, which, as I sit by the open window, comes in and brushes softly across my hand! The first snowflake tells of winter not more plainly than this driving down heralds the approach of fall. Come here, my fairy, and tell me whence you come and whither ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... narrow filter flask just large enough to accommodate an ordinary 18 x 2 cm. test-tube. The mouth of the tubular Chamberland candle 15 x 1.5 cm. is closed by a perforated rubber cork into which fits the end of the stem of a thistle headed funnel, whilst immediately below the butt of the funnel is situated a rubber cork to close the mouth of the filter flask. When the apparatus is fixed in position and connected to an exhaust pump, the cultivation ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... tree bring forth good fruit." Here a great spiritual principle was announced. We must consider the nature; nothing less than a change in the nature can change the fruit. A bad heart is just as sure to bring forth bad thoughts and bad deeds as the thistle is to bring forth thorns. And so the good heart is just as sure to yield good deeds as the grape-vine is to yield grapes or the fig-tree is to yield figs. Look at the tree, therefore; the fruit will take ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... eyes at a limb For which she had been such a martyr: The deer in the park, and the colts at grass, And the cows unheeded let it pass; And the ass on the common was such an ass, That he wouldn't have swopp'd The thistle he cropp'd For her Leg, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain, You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again. I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier, The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money he wastes, till he ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... of brags, lies, promises, forged recommendations and letters, boasts of systematic charity, funny scraps of stuff in the form of little disquisitions, advertisements of remedies, hair-oils, cosmetics, liquors, groceries, thistle-killers, anti-bug mixtures, recipes for soap, ink, honey, and the Old Harry only knows what. The fellow gives a list of seventy-one specific diseases for which his Hasheesh Candy is a sure cure, and he adds that ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the forehead, did not break his neck; but it ought to have done. It cast him clean over backwards out of his own front-door, where he fell down the bank, and was received, all his little short paws scrambling for a hold, by a thistle, and would have told all the world, with a thin, high squeak, what he had sat on, if the squeak had not frozen ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... what she put in his button-hole; a thistle, thorns and all, would have been precious to him if her hands had touched it, and he would have torn his fingers against the prickles with an exquisite ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... desert; you think he never can be made to produce anything. But he shall be supplied, and thus be made to blossom as the rose. Others are dry land of a general character; but there is water enough to make all fruitful: so that instead of the thorn, the myrtle; and instead of the thistle, the fig; and instead of the deadly upas, the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... by the great weight long before they get so far, or else come to a place where perhaps they float. But I dare say a cannon sometimes comes careering solemnly down, and circling about like a dead leaf or thistle-down; and then the ragged fellows go and play about the cannon and tell themselves all kinds of stories about the fish higher up and their iron houses, and perhaps go inside and sleep, and perhaps dream of it all like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tenor : tenoro; senco; signifo tent : tendo terrace : teraso. terror : teruro. testify : atesti. text : teksto textile : teksa. thaw : degeli. theatre : teatro. then : tiam, poste, do. thick : dika; densa. thigh : femuro. thing : afero, ajxo, objekto. think : pensi, opinii. thirst : soif'i, -o. thistle : kardo. thorn : dorno. thrash : drasxi; skurgxi, bategi. threaten : minaci. threshold : sojlo. thrill : eksciti. throat : gorgxo, fauxko. throne : trono. throw : jxeti. thrush : turdo. thunder : tondr'i, -o. thus : tiel, tiamaniere; jene thyme : timiano. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... mercy—cates [delicates, good things] and honey, if thou wilt have it so. 'Twas all froth and thistle-down." ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... gardens, with bells large and clear; crimson pinks; the Michaelmas daisy; a plant with a thin, radiated yellow flower, of the character of an aster; a centaurea of a light purple, handsomer than any English one; a thistle in the dryest places, resembling an eryngo, with a thick, bushy top; mulleins, yellow and white; the wild mignonnette, and the white convolvulus; and clematis festooning the bushes, recalled the flowery fields and lanes of England, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... once took him with her when she went to milk the cow; and it being a very windy day, she tied him with a needleful of thread to a thistle, that he might not be blown away. The cow, liking his oak-leaf hat, took him and the thistle up at one mouthful. While the cow chewed the thistle, Tom, terrified at her great teeth, which seemed ready to ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... now stole some such added gloom as this. Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed — The thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha! What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could swear thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the meadow is as safe from hungry cattle as though fenced in by barbed wire. A cow must be starving that would care to flavor her luncheon with the needles that the thistle bears. The common skunk cabbage would make a tempting meal for her after a winter of dry feeding, had not Nature given it an odor that disgusts even a spring-time appetite. The milkweed welcomes the bees and flies that help to distribute her ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... All had the same start, many had similar environments. Yet witness the motly products of evolution: Man, ape, elephant, skunk, scorpion, lizard, lark, toad, lobster, louse, flea, amoeba, hookworm, and countless microscopic animals; also, the palm, lily, melon, maize, mushroom, thistle, cactus, microscopic bacilli, etc. All developed from one germ, all in some way related. Mark well the difference in size between the elephant, louse, and microscopic hookworm, and the difference in intellect between ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... thou shalt eat bread,' indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of calamity; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also some shadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn and its thistle; so that all nations have held their days honourable, or 'holy,' and constituted them 'holydays' or 'holidays,' by making them days of rest; and the promise, which, among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the chief brightness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in the Lord, that ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... a purple sea-thistle close to his head. It poised there with fanning wings, so languid, so ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... named strode into the roughly-furnished kitchen-like room, looking as unlike a clergyman and a lawyer as could be imagined, for both were dressed in well-worn garments, half farmer, half back wood settler, the one with a thistle staff or spud in his hand, the other shouldering a double gun, which, following the example of his companion, he set up in a corner in company with the spud and a couple of fishing rods and a landing-net, before going to the broad ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... drowsily sweet. Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol, the light of his eye; Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a butterfly. The weight of her arms around his neck was light as the thistle down; And sweetly she studied to win his smile, and gently she mocked his frown. And when at the close of the dusty day his clangorous toil was done, She hastened to meet him down the way all lit ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... heart out; you'd always get what you wanted somehow, and you wouldn't wait for it either; and I'm just the same. I'm not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I'm naturally just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all these years I've grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just enough to make me worthy to be her sister. Waitstill is like ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cushions, and quilts—be it enacted, that no person or persons whatsoever shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer to be sold) any feather-bed, bolster, or pillow, except the same be stuffed with dry-pulled feathers, or clean down only, without mixing of scalded feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like to know what 'unlawful or corrupt stuff' is, and whether the corruptness be physical through putridity, or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... battlements, Newstead, [2] the hollow winds whistle: [ii] Thou, the hall of my Fathers, art gone to decay; In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choak'd up the rose, which ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of thistle-down, entwined with thistle-leaves," said Zarah.—"I know not a slighter thing than your Buckingham! I saw him at your request—saw him when, as a man, he should have shown himself generous and noble—I stood the proof at your desire, for I laugh at those dangers ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Malcolm, angrily, as he interrupted the intruder—a tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, with the bonnet set upon the grizzled head in that sturdy independence—nay, more than independence—rudeness, rough and thorny as his own thistle, which is the characteristic of the Scotch peasant externally, till you get below the surface ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... or design were vain. There must be courage to reject no less than to gather. A man is at liberty to neglect things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier.... Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor should I understand the taste that would reject the wildness of the thorn and holly, or the child-loving labyrinths of the bramble, or wholesome ranges of the downs and warrens fragrant ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... the lofty blue are blown Light vapors white, like thistle-down, That from their softened silver heaps opaque Scatter delicate flake by flake, Upon the wide loom of the heavens weaving Forms of fancies past believing, And, with fantastic show of mute despair, As for some sweet hope hurt beyond repair, Melt ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... richest cream-color, and the wild cucumber pours a shower of white over the green leaves of the sumach or sage. Snap-dragons of blue and white, dandelions that you must look at three or four times to be certain what they are, thistles that are soft and tender with flowers too pretty for the thistle family, orchids that you may try in vain to classify, and sages and mints of which you can barely recognize the genera, with cruciferae, compositae, and what-not, add to the glare ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... thistle-stalk sends up a noble bloom Wid de shape of a flower an' de thought of a plume, But its prickle-y ways turn friendship down; So it stands all alone, in its velvet gown. An' it ain't by its lonesome self in dat— No, it ain't by itself ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... made chemically perfect, as indicated by analysis. It is also believed that those weeds, which naturally grow on the most fertile soils, are the ones most easily destroyed. There are exceptions (of which the Thistle is one), but this is ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... little brother, With eyes that were dark and deep; In the lap of that dim old forest, He lieth in peace asleep: Light as the down of the thistle, Free as the winds that blow, We roved there the beautiful summers, The summers of long ago; But his feet on the hills grew weary, And, one of the autumn eves, I made for my little brother, A bed ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... celebrated Doctor McQ——, who was expected to give us an argumentative sermon that morning, until my argument came floating in at the door like a calm little bit of thistledown, to which our previous conversation had been as the thistle's self. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... The thorn and the thistle harvest that society reaps every year is fearfully great, and the seed from which too large a portion of this harvest comes is its drinking customs. Men of observation and intelligence everywhere give this testimony with one consent. All around us, day and night, year by year, in ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... with lecturers, with sensation-seekers, all of them in advance discounting their hero, and showing in broad light their gigantic stupidity. One of this motley finds in McClellan a Norman chin, the other muscle, the third a brow for laurels (of thistle I hope), another a square, military, heroic frame, another firmness in lips, another an unfathomed depth in the eye, etc., etc. Never I heard in Europe such balderdash. And the ladies—not the women and gentlewomen—are worse than the men in thus stupefying ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... neglected, Though not a creature ill-affected. Along the road a dog and he One master follow'd silently. Their master slept: meanwhile, the ass Applied his nippers to the grass, Much pleased in such a place to stop, Though there no thistle he could crop. He would not be too delicate, Nor spoil a dinner for a plate, Which, but for that, his favourite dish, Were all that ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... specimens caught in the Severn River to the southward of Moreton Bay: on examining the intestines of this fish, they were full of the shells of Limnaea and Cyclas. Large specimens of helix were frequent on the Vervain Plains, but they were only dead shells. The fat-hen (Atriplex) and the sow-thistle (Sonchus) grew abundantly on the reedy flats at the upper end of the creek; Grewia, a prostrate Myoporum, and a bean with yellow blossoms, were frequent all over the valley. Atriplex forms, when young, as we gratefully experienced, an excellent vegetable, as do also ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... character would be Touch-me-not. I believe there's a flower called that—noli me tangere—or some such name. Well, that's Vicky Van. She'd laugh and jest with you, and then if you said anything by way of a personal compliment or flirtatious foolery, she was off and away from your side, like a thistle-down in a summer breeze. She was a witch, a madcap, but she had her own way in everything, and her friends did her ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... deep shade of the cool glossy leaves, through the long warm summer day; to gather the fresh nuts and berries; to drink the pure dews of heaven, all bright and sparkling from the opening flowers; to sleep on soft beds of moss and thistle-down in some hollow branch rocked by the wind as in a cradle. Yet, though this was the happy life led by a family of pretty grey squirrels that had their dwelling in the hoary branch of an old oak-tree that grew on one ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... the root, He clapp'd them underneath the tail Of steed, with pricks as sharp as nail. 845 The angry beast did straight resent The wrong done to his fundament; Began to kick, and fling, and wince, As if h' had been beside his sense, Striving to disengage from thistle, 850 That gall'd him sorely under his tail: Instead of which, he threw the pack Of Squire and baggage from his back; And blund'ring still with smarting rump, He gave the Knight's steed such a thump 855 As made him reel. The Knight did stoop, And sat on further side aslope. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... pathetically the call note of their days of freedom. It is upon this yearning for liberty and its manifestation that the bird trappers depend to secure more victims. No sooner does the piping call go forth from the golden throats of the little prisoners, than a reply comes from the thistle tops, far down the field. A moment more and the traps are surrounded with the black and yellow beauties. The fact that one of their own kind is within the curious little house which confronts them seems to send all their timidity to the winds and they fairly ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... the nettle stung her, And the thistle's rude embrace Burned her sensitive nature, And scarred ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... the glorious stories of Wales, Scotland and Ireland have been nearly lost in that of mighty England, men have at times, almost forgotten about the leek, the thistle, and the shamrock, which stand for the other three divisions ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... placed a thin layer of asbestos, such as is used for Gooch filters, 1 mm. thick. The tube is then filled with the amalgamated zinc (Note 1) to within 50 mm. of the top, and on the zinc is placed a plug of glass wool. If the top of the tube is not already shaped like the mouth of a thistle-tube (B), a 60 mm. funnel is fitted into the tube with a rubber stopper and the reductor is connected with a suction bottle, F. The bottle D is a safety bottle to prevent contamination of the solution by water from the pump. After ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... Langham exchanged a few commonplaces till the others joined them, and then for a while the attention of everybody in the group was held by the squire's sister. She was very small, as thin and light as thistle-down, ill-dressed, and as communicative as a babbling child. The face and all the features were extraordinarily minute, and moreover, blanched and etherealised by age. She had the elfish look of a little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she usually managed with such quiet grace. Zibbie was in one of her very worst tantrums, and when she heard that there was to be company to dinner, seemed in danger of flying into fragments. The thistle, the emblem of her land, was a meek and downy flower compared with this ancient dame. When she took up or laid down any utensil, it was in a way that bade fair to reduce the kitchen to chaos before night. Jeff had "got his back up" also about the hen, and was as stupid and sullen as ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... America Afloat. Shamrock and Thistle; or, Young America in Ireland and Scotland. Red Cross; or, Young America in England and Wales. Dikes and Ditches, or, Young America in Holland and Belgium. Palace and Cottage; or, Young America in France and Switzerland. Down the Rhine; or, Young ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... taste just like baked custard. They lay from twenty to thirty in the large ant-heaps which one constantly meets with in the bush, and which when rifled, in January or February, yield a rich harvest of these eggs. A shrub very much like dogwood, with a lilac flower rather like a large thistle, but with the leaves turned back, was plentiful, and is a valuable product, horses being able to live upon it for many weeks without water, though it does not look especially succulent. We saw beautiful parrots of all colours flying across the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of Edwards either," cried Kirkpatrick, once more looking boldly up, and shaking his broad claymore: "My thistle has a point to sting all to death who would pass between this ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply such a comfortable acquiescence; and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... explained the shepherd, "are the Merry-Go-Round Mountains, set close together and surrounded by deep gulfs, so that no one is able to get past them. Beyond the Merry-Go-Round Mountains it is said the Thistle-Eaters and the Herkus live." ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... builds a plain nest in the open field, without so much as a bush or thistle or tuft of grass to protect it or mark its site; you may step upon it, or the cattle may tread it into the ground. But the danger from this source, I presume, the bird considers less than that from another. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... after some conference with Charles Sharpe, I have hit on a plan, which, I think, will look very well, if tolerably executed,—namely, to have the lady seated in due form on the top of the lid (which will look handsome, and will be well taken), and to have a thistle wreathed around the sarcophagus and rising above her head, and from the top of the thistle shall proceed the birse. I will bring a drawing with me, and they shall get the cup ready in the mean time. I hope to be at Abbotsford on Monday night, to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Tangye's baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his native town. But the Touch-me-not, which he had commanded for thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh a scroll with the motto, Noli Me Tangere, and this being, in popular belief, an effigy of the captain taken in the prime of life, Mr. Tangye cheerfully accepted ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Oisin, that was so brave and so comely, and that could overtake a deer at its greatest speed, and see a thistle thorn on the darkest night, the wife he took was Eibhir of the plaited yellow hair, that was the foreign sweetheart of the High King ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... one pound, and four pounds. The smaller sizes are the ones most often made with mixed goat and sheep milk. The method of curdling without the usual animal rennet is interesting and unusual. The milk is warmed and curdled with vegetable rennet made from the flowers of a local thistle, or cardoon, which is used in two other Portuguese cheeses—Queijo da Cardiga and Queijo da Serra da Estrella—and probably in many others not known beyond their locale. In France la Caillebotte is distinguished for being clabbered with chardonnette, wild artichoke seed. In Portugal, ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... vividness and intensity beyond that of other places. I see it in the yellows of hawkweed, rock-rose, and birds'-foot-trefoil, in the innumerable specks of brilliant colour—blue and white and rose—of milk-wort and squinancy-wort, and in the large flowers of the dwarf thistle, glowing purple in its green setting; and I hear it in every bird-sound, in the trivial songs of yellow-hammer and corn-bunting, and of dunnock and ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... a distinctly expressed aversion, and the very strangeness of the experience was not without attraction for his eager and dominant temperament. What a queer little oddity she was, he thought as he glanced up at the grave old house before turning rapidly away—as light and sensitive as thistle-down, as vivid as flame. He tried to recall her delicately distinguished figure and profound dark eyes, but her charming smile seemed to come between him and her features, and her face was obscured for him in a mysterious radiance. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... reasons than those already presented. In the cages in which various predatory Hymenoptera whose warlike habits I am studying are confined, waiting until I have procured the desired prey—not always an easy proceeding—I have planted a few heads of flowers and a couple of thistle-heads sprinkled with drops of honey, renewed at need. On these my captives feed. In the case of the Philanthus the honeyed flowers, although welcomed, are not indispensable. It is enough if from time to time I place in the cage a few living bees. Half a dozen a day is about the proper allowance. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the walk to meet her, her tail like a great plume, her soft coat as fluffy as thistle down. Proudly she walked as if ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... broken columns to mark the form of the chapel; but the arch of the west window was complete, and the wreaths of ivy hid its want of tracery, while a red Virginian creeper mantled the wall. All was calm and still, the greensward smooth and carefully mown, not a nettle or thistle visible, but the floriated crosses on the old stone coffin lids showing clearly above the level turf, shaded by a few fine old trees, while the river glided smoothly along under the broad floating water-lily leaves, and on its other side ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... coolness and the gradual approach to the great Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... up at once, for heaven's sake. The general has come with all his officers. Ah! goodness, you have got a thistle in your moustache." ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... him with her when she went to milk the cow; and it being a very windy day, she tied him with a needleful of thread to a thistle, that he might not be blown away. The cow, liking his oak-leaf hat, took him and the thistle up at one mouthful. While the cow chewed the thistle, Tom, terrified at her great teeth, which seemed ready to crush him to pieces, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lightness it assumed the moment feet moved in time with the music. If life had been a continuous waltz no partner of hers less awkward than a rhinoceros could have avoided falling in love with her. But waltzes ended all too soon and the thistle-down sylph of a woman became my plain homely Blanquette, uninspiring of romance save in the hardware bosom of the quincaillier at the corner ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... field, along the hedge, and the bank above the ditch, stood the weeds. There were dense clumps of them—Thistle and Burdock, Poppy and Harebell, and Dandelion; and all their heads were full of seed. It had been a fruitful year for them also, for the sun shines and the rain falls just as much on the poor weed ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... then escorted the ladies home. But Thumbelina could not sleep that night; so she got out of bed, and plaited a great big blanket of straw, and carried it off, and spread it over the dead bird, and piled upon it thistle-down as soft as cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, so that the poor little thing should lie ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... there, or drowned sailors either, from the upper parts, because these are all mashed to pieces by the great weight long before they get so far, or else come to a place where perhaps they float. But I dare say a cannon sometimes comes careering solemnly down, and circling about like a dead leaf or thistle-down; and then the ragged fellows go and play about the cannon and tell themselves all kinds of stories about the fish higher up and their iron houses, and perhaps go inside and sleep, and perhaps dream of it all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sharp-taloned Goblins when the thorns of the Ryls reached their savage hearts and let their life-blood sprinkle all the plain. And afterward from every drop a thistle grew. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... fell Dean, by whose command Was form'd this Machiavelian plot, Not leave a thistle on thy land; Then who will own thee ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... now and took up the pail. The cows meandered along. She was rather glad Jim did not see the thistle. She would not tell him ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... her wish, at the mature age of fifty, after twenty years of joyless married life with a shrewish, bony wife; he, who had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by his passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She had promised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in the household was one of silent reproach and protest; she ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... have passed before Christianity had obtained a footing among the Roman people; we know not how. To use Dr. Martineau's expressive similitude, the Faith was blown over the world silently like thistle-seed, and as silently here and there it fell and took root. We know no more who were its first preachers in Rome than we do who they were in Britain. It was in Rome before St. Paul arrived in the city, for he had already written his Epistle to the Romans; but evidently ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... rail to Glasgow and thence joyfully sailed away from beloved Scotland, flying to our fortunes on the wings of the winds, care-free as thistle seeds. We could not then know what we were leaving, what we were to encounter in the New World, nor what our gains were likely to be. We were too young and full of hope for fear or regret, but not too ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... donkey that he didn't know it, and it only comes harder for him. The fool ought to have been better acquainted with his own interior condition; then he might have eased his descent to his royal thistle, secured his repast or gone without it, and got back to his stable with a whole skin. Otherwise it is just the same. The heart is an idiot baby, Robert: it feeds on pap and thinks it is guzzling nectar ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... fling, and wince, As if he'd been beside his sense, Striving to disengage from thistle That gall'd him sorely under ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... other roses In the songs of East and West Of love and war and worshipping, And every shield and crest Of thistle or of lotus Or sacred lily wrought In creeds and psalms and palaces And temples of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... approach to the great Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes, indeed, there is now no mistake—the well-known, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... contrasted with her pure white front, and twisted in a dainty curve to match her features. Her feet and tiny claws were the pink of a sea-shell. Her eyes were small (harvest mice have small eyes), but they were very gentle. As she sighted him, she swung lightly up a thistle stem, and sat for a moment balanced on the head. Evidently he was ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... grazing-grounds, and by the brink of the dull-green, serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply such a comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so unfair that just ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... rivulet came tumbling down, giving to the scene an appearance of the most delightful coolness, and amusing the ear with the unceasing roar of a waterfall. From the very face of the cliff, where there seemed to be scarcely soil enough to nourish a thistle, numerous shrubs and dwarf trees protruded themselves; whilst above it, and on every side of the area, the hills were covered with wood, interrupted now and then by the bald forehead of a blackened rock. In front of the hamlet again, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... paled. The indecisiveness which never dared to grasp the thistle firmly was troubling him with a new dilemma. Yet something in Marcia Terroll made a call upon him which no other woman had yet made—the call to be honest at ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... paces before he could rein it in. Then he looked up to avoid imaginary dangers, and then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick and fast as thistle-down on waste land on a windy day in July the cobweb ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... his garden, and saw the wild brier The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money still wastes till ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... that you kick aside, the plant pressing up between the boards, the dew shimmering on the weed. Investigate all your surroundings, especially the small, neglected places, and try to have an opinion about what you observe. A busy man, a merchant, noticed, some time ago, a thistle growing by the wayside. He was journeying in the steam-cars at the time; and, although the next stopping-place was somewhat far, he walked back to find the strange flower. The prize he gained was a rare plant, a beautiful thistle of which he had ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... roses, arnica liniment, ointment of marshmallow root, of poplar-buds, basilicon ointment, ointment of white camphor, salt of wormwood, salts of the blessed thistle, sal-prunella.] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... saddle there was some coarse grass which was in full seed, and therefore very nourishing for the horses; also abundance of anise and sow- thistle, of which they are extravagantly fond, so we turned them loose and prepared to camp. Everything was soaking wet and we were half-perished with cold; indeed we were very uncomfortable. There was brushwood about, but we could get no fire till we had shaved off the wet outside of some dead branches ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... for impure, bestial and selfish thoughts to blossom into loving and altruistic habits. Thistle seeds bring forth only the thistle. Contrariwise, it is entirely impossible for continual altruistic, sympathetic, and serviceful thoughts to bring forth a low and vicious character. Either thoughts or feelings precede ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried across the splintered stump with crushing impact from the power of its flight, plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge which broke the shell-jacket into slashing ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... addicted to this practice, and that this might be his method of amusement while unprovided with a partner. The nest of the Hemp-bird is made of cotton, the down of the fern, and other soft materials, woven together with threads and the fibres of bark, and lined with thistle-down, if it be late enough to obtain it, and sometimes with cow's hair. It is commonly placed in the fork of the slender branches of a maple, linden, or poplar, and is fastened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... burrs of a plant something like a thistle. They are about the size of a small egg, only not quite so large around, and they do not taper so much, though one end is a little larger than the other. They have sharp points, sort of like hooks, which all turn down toward the stem, so you can run your ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... fine examples of Sussex backs illustrated are typical of popular styles. Fig. 11 shows the Royal lion of England, accompanied by the emblems appearing on the Royal arms in the seventeenth century; the Tudor rose crowned, the Scottish thistle, and the French fleur-de-lis indicative of the throne of France to which English sovereigns then laid some claim. The date of this fine back is 1649. Fig. 7 is of an earlier period, being dated 1588, beneath which are the initials "I.F.C." ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... fellow prowled about promiscuously a while, assailing one and another in French, to about as much purpose as one might have tried to storm the walls with discharges of thistle down; all smoked and drank as before. But as several other visitors arrived, and it became evident that if we did not come to see the castle, it was not likely we came for any thing else, a man was fished up from some depths unknown, with a promising ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the verification of it are of so recent a date, that we cannot resist giving it a place in our pages. In the account of the late Captain Flinder's voyage of discovery, is the melancholy relation of the loss of the master, Mr. Thistle, with seven others, in a boat, on the inhospitable shores of Terra Australia. To this narrative, the following note is subjoined, which we shall here quote in Captain Flinder's own words: "This evening, Mr. Fowler, the lieutenant, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... before observed is eatable, and not unlike a greengage. I returned home loaded with this undescribed genus: I found likewise a fine Buddleia, and Menispermum, with some rare Compositae, among which was an arborescent Eupatorium and a gigantic thistle, a Prunus in flower and fruit, and a neat Liparis, Calamus, Tree- fern, Tupistra, Pandanus, were likewise observed, and a beautiful Viburnum, Corol sterilibus, 4 phyllis, foliis niveis carneo venosis: petal fertil calyptratis, deciduis, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... were present, having first filled the court with murmurs, answered in this manner: 'Great goddess, be pleased to reflect a little on the animosities such a choice may create among the rival flowers; even the worthless Thistle will pretend to deserve the crown, and if denied, will perhaps grow factious, and disturb your peaceful reign.' 'Your fears are groundless,' replied the goddess; 'I apprehend no such consequence; my resolution is already fixed; hear, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... at the moment," she answered, "at the 'Sign of the Blue Thistle.' He has with him his secretary, Donovan; his valet, and two serving-men. They have their lodgment in four rooms on the second floor; he is bid to the ball at the Duchess of Gordon's to-night and at eleven to-morrow leaves in his private ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Payne stopped to look at a great sow-thistle that was growing vigorously under a hedge-row. "Did you ever see such a bit of pure force?" said Father Payne. "I see a fierce conscious life in every inch of that plant. Look at the way he clips himself in, and strains to the earth: look at his great rays of leaves, thrust out so geometrically ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... threatened the whole kingdom with civil war and confusion. The queen conferred titles upon those who appeared to have influence in the nation [118] [See note Y, at the end of this Vol.] and attachment to her government, and revived the order of the thistle, which the late ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... tress of that glorious hair, so near to him now that, by leaning a little forward, he might have touched it with his lips. The thought brought him no horror. For even as he looked, one of her hands crept up to her cheek—the small, soft hand that had touched his face and hair as lightly as a bit of thistle-down—and he knew that two hands like that could not have killed a man who was fighting ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... Charles Sharpe, I have hit on a plan, which, I think, will look very well, if tolerably executed,—namely, to have the lady seated in due form on the top of the lid (which will look handsome, and will be well taken), and to have a thistle wreathed around the sarcophagus and rising above her head, and from the top of the thistle shall proceed the birse. I will bring a drawing with me, and they shall get the cup ready in the mean time. I hope to be at Abbotsford on Monday night, to stay for a week. My cat has eat two or ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... William L. Marcy, Secretary of State of the United States; and Her Majesty, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, James, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, Lord Bruce and Elgin, a peer of the United Kingdom, knight of the most ancient and most noble Order of the Thistle, and Governor General in and over all Her Britannic Majesty's provinces on the continent of North America and in and over the island of Prince Edward—who, after having communicated to each other their respective full powers, found in good and ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... yearning for liberty and its manifestation that the bird trappers depend to secure more victims. No sooner does the piping call go forth from the golden throats of the little prisoners, than a reply comes from the thistle tops, far down the field. A moment more and the traps are surrounded with the black and yellow beauties. The fact that one of their own kind is within the curious little house which confronts them seems to send all their timidity to the winds and they fairly fall over ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... the correlation of the body with the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will come the power ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... to pull to pieces with the fingers. v. ad loc. et Junius, voce Tease. Hence teasing for carding wool with teasels, a specics of thistle or instrument. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... of plants, the power of increase is even greater and its effects more distinctly visible. Hundreds of square miles of the plains of La Plata are now covered with two or three species of European thistle, often to the exclusion of almost every other plant; but in the native countries of these thistles they occupy, except in cultivated or waste ground, a very subordinate part in the vegetation. Some American plants, like the cotton-weed (Asclepias ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... within the meadow mist Their halos, wavering thistle-downs of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... snow, only a few veins and patches here and there, threading and seaming the steep, as if a white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the cot of poor ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on them! In a second—in less than a second, the terrible fireball had burst like a shell! Thousands of glittering fragments were flying around them in all directions—but with no more noise than is made by so many light flakes of thistle-down floating about some warm afternoon in summer. The blinding, blasting steely white glare of the explosion almost bereft the travellers of the use of their eyesight forever, but no more report reached their ears than if it had taken place at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In an atmosphere ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... oaks and beeches still wore their liveries of rustling amber, the short grass on hill-side pastures was intensely green, flocks of thistle-birds disguised in demure russet passed in wavering flight from thicket to thicket, and over all a hot sun blazed in a sky of sapphire, linking summer and autumn together in the magnificence of a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant, plain holy-thistle. You may think, perchance, that I think you are in love: nay, by'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor, indeed, I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love, or that you will be in love, or ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... is Sixty Years since) the now universal potato was unknown, but which were stored with gigantic plants of KALE or colewort, encircled with groves of nettles, and exhibited here and there a huge hemlock, or the national thistle, overshadowing a quarter of the petty enclosure. The broken ground on which the village was built had never been levelled; so that these enclosures presented declivities of every degree, here rising like terraces, there sinking like ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... down seed—"Tiddly, widdly, widdly! Pouff, pouff, puff." said Mr. Jackson. He blew the thistle- down ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... unwholesomeness; dogs move round as if upon a hunt and on the scent for game; the yoked goose, after more than one expression of its sense of dignity, retires a little out of the way; and now the ground sparrow, deeming his thistle or over-hanging Barberry-bush insecure against the incursions of all these comers and goers, regrets at a short and watchful distance, and with all the anxiety of a politician, that he had not built more wisely under covert of the other side of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the fields with his mother went, To milk the cow was her intent; The wind blew high as they did walk, So she tied him to a thistle stalk; The cow the thistle view'd and cropp'd, In her mouth, with Tom, it soon was popp'd! Her teeth put Tom in such a fright, That he "mother" bawl'd with all his might! The cow, on hearing such a rout, Open'd her jaws, and ...
— An Entertaining History of Tom Thumb - William Raine's Edition • Unknown
... thought out detail and perfection more minutely. There it lay, the gift of a generous man to a lonely girl, everything for her graduating night! The filmy gown with its touch of colour in embroidered thistle flowers; the slippers and gloves; even the lace scarf, cloud-like and alluring; the long gloves and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... against contagion. Rivers and mountains are easily crossed by corrupting example. Ardent spirits, like all other fluids, perpetually seek their level. In vain does the farmer eradicate from his fields the last vestige of the noisome thistle, while the neighboring grounds are given up to its dominion, and every wind scatters the seed where it listeth. The effort against intemperance, to be effective, must ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... sobs and flew away again, nearly scared out of its wits. A goldfinch came and perched on a furze-bush near, looked wonderingly at the odd-shaped thing that made such funny noises, and then flew away to a thistle and began to search for any stray seeds that might have been overlooked. Little spiders ran over the boulder and put out delicate feelers to try to discover what curious pinky-white things those were that lay on the old stone; then, after a first venture, finding them harmless, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... had evidently made up his mind that the road to the Landslip was not a congenial one. In vain the boy who drove him cheered him onwards, in vain Denys tugged at his bridle, in vain Audrey walked in front holding out an inviting thistle. At length Mrs. Henchman got flurried ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... dead; he will do nothing more of any worth. Women like her are like the Indian drugs, that sleep and kill. How is that any fault of mine? He could see the thing she was. If he will fling his soul away upon a creature lighter than thistle-down, viler than a rattlesnake's poison, poorer and quicker to pass than the breath of a gnat—whose blame is that except his own? There was a sculptor once, you know, that fell to lascivious worship of the marble image he had made; well,—poets are not ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... certain weeds which would not grow on them if they were made chemically perfect, as indicated by analysis. It is also believed that those weeds, which naturally grow on the most fertile soils, are the ones most easily destroyed. There are exceptions (of which the Thistle is one), but this is given as a ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... hat he had for his crown; His shirt of web by spiders spun; With jacket wove of thistle's down; His trowsers were of feathers done. His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie With eyelash from his mother's eye His shoes were made of mouse's skin, Tann'd with the downy ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... (the name adopted by the Italian Bartholomew Sacchi), which dates from the fifteenth century, do not lead us to suppose that alimentary horticulture had made much progress since the time of Charlemagne. Moreover, we are astonished to find the thistle placed amongst choice dishes; though it cannot be the common thistle that is meant, but probably this somewhat general appellation refers to the vegetable-marrow, which is still found on the tables of the higher classes, or perhaps ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... strode into the roughly-furnished kitchen-like room, looking as unlike a clergyman and a lawyer as could be imagined, for both were dressed in well-worn garments, half farmer, half back wood settler, the one with a thistle staff or spud in his hand, the other shouldering a double gun, which, following the example of his companion, he set up in a corner in company with the spud and a couple of fishing rods and a landing-net, before going to the broad shelf over the fire-place, upon ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... disintegrated into one solid mass, and covered with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming clover, where the bees hum and the crickets chirp around you, and can look through the arch which frames its own fair picture. In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown with bayberry and gay with thistle blooms; then the little winding cove with its bordering cliffs; and the rough pastures with their grazing sheep beyond. Or, ascending the parapet, you can look across the bay to the men making hay picturesquely on far-off lawns, or to the cannon on the outer ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase at my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help pronouncing the thistle beautiful,—a close bunch of minute rose-purple flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beauty is a thing not merely of form and color, but of memory and association. The thistle is an ugly customer. In a single respect it lays itself out to be agreeable; ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... came into a great plain, acres and acres of green rag-weed where the wheat had grown, all so flat one thought of an enormous billiard table, and now, where the railroad crossed the country roads, they saw the staunch brown thistle, sometimes the sumach, and always the graceful iron-weed, slender, tall, proud, bowing a purple-turbaned head, or shaking in an agony of fright when it stood too close to the train. The fields, like great, flat emeralds set in new metal, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... built by the Government for the old Dutch naturalists who surveyed and explored the mountain. There are a lot of strawberries planted there, which do very well, but there were not many ripe. The common weeds and plants of the top were very like English ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many others, all closely allied to our common plants of those names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey-suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... silent. So, too, was the actress, for some moments; then, softened almost to tears, half closing her eyes, and letting her fancy float away like thistle-down over town and country, upland, valley, and moor, she said softly,—"Dear Burleigh Grange, how lovely it must be now! What a verdurous twilight reigns under the old elms of the avenue!—in what a passion of bloom the roses are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... compos'd of Crickets bones, And daintily made for the nonce, For feare of ratling on the stones, With Thistle-downe they shod it; For all her Maydens much did feare, If Oberon had chanc'd to heare, 150 That Mab his Queene should haue bin there, He would not haue ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... sound. It is the intake of the breath of horror from ten thousand pairs of lungs. Look! Look! The edges of the parachute ruffle, and then it blossoms out like an opening flower. It bounces on the air a little, and rocking gently sinks like thistle-down ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... what there was about my partner—a whimsical humor, a slight mocking sound in his voice, which pleased me; he took nothing seriously; everything he said was as light as a thistle-down; he reminded me of the wit of grandmamma and the Marquis; we got ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... intellect. Thus, the beauty of the rose would not certainly be so perceptible to us, wanting its fragrance, and, with a nauseous smell, would not probably be admitted, as I may say, into the rank of agreeableness, though it is in reality a beautiful and pleasing object; nor, supposing the thistle, or any other ugly flower, possessed of the fragrance of the rose, should we therefore think it an object of taste, any more than we can think the form of an elephant beautiful, though endued ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... ago. Joanna made no demur, though, a month before, nothing would have induced her to believe that she would be staying with Susie this March at Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he fell in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the procession the Highlanders, who were real Scotchmen, in plaids, and bonnets with eagle feathers. Every one had a claymore by his side, and a thistle on his breast; and there were pipers playing on bagpipes ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... tongue. This is a curious feature, for prickles usually grow out of veins. In the receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow together, rain and dew are found collected - a certain cure for warts, country people say. Venus' Cup, Bath, or Basin, and Water Thistle, are a few of the teasel's folk names earned by its curious little tank. In it many small insects are drowned, and these are supposed to contribute nourishment to the plant; for Mr. Francis Darwin has noted that protoplasmic filaments reach ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power,—monuments ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... brickfields, and straggling village streets, the larger houses of the petty great, flower-grown railway banks, garden-set stations, and all the little things of the vanished nineteenth century still holding out against Immensity. Here and there would be a patch of wind-sown, wind-tattered giant thistle defying the axe; here and there a ten-foot puff-ball or the ashen stems of some burnt-out patch of monster grass; but that was all there was to hint at the coming ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— O the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... sufficiently to proceed. The little path, that led to the building, was overgrown with grass and the flowers which St. Aubert had scattered carelessly along the border were almost choked with weeds—the tall thistle—the fox-glove, and the nettle. She often paused to look on the desolate spot, now so silent and forsaken, and when, with a trembling hand, she opened the door of the fishing-house, 'Ah!' said she, 'every thing—every ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... effectually as if it were the wind, and they, the sand and pebbles, of our illustration; or, on the other hand, as if the intelligence of a gardener had been operative in cutting the weaker organisms down. The thistle, which has spread over the Pampas, to the destruction of native plants, has been more effectually "selected" by the unconscious operation of natural conditions than if a thousand agriculturists had spent ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular days in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they were to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some thistle-down with their rushes, which it was thought had the property of giving warmth. By the time they were come to this age, there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to bear him company. The ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of republican government in America the angel of freedom and the demon of slavery wrestled for the mastery. Tallyrand has beautifully and forcibly said: "The Lily and Thistle may grow together in harmonious proximity, but liberty and slavery delight in the separation." The pronounced policy of the best minds at the adoption of the Federal Constitution was to repress it as an institution inhuman in its character and fraught with mischief. Foretelling with ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... a snowflake falls, then a few others, soft as the spray of the thistle in the early days of October. Gently as the fairy balloons of the dandelion they float through the air and rest upon the withered leaves of the white oaks. Soon they come faster, and now the forest-crowned ridge half a mile away which was in plain sight a minute ago is screened ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Mezhesay, n. a turkey Mesahmaig, n. a whale Mahzhahmagoos, n. trout Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, n. a kind ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... been incredible. So it is with plants; cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, which are now the commonest over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of every other plant, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... diamonds. His Royal Highness Prince Albert wore a field-marshal's uniform, with the collars of the Orders of the Garter and the Black Eagle (of Prussia), with four stars set in diamonds of the Garter, the Thistle, St. Patrick, and the Bath, and the ensigns of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... yellowbird, or goldfinch. This is one of the last birds to nest, seldom hatching its eggs till late in July. It seems as if a particular kind of food were required to rear its brood, which cannot be had at an earlier date. The seed of the common thistle is apparently its mainstay. There is no prettier sight at this season than a troop of young goldfinches, led by their parents, going from thistle to thistle along the roadside and pulling the ripe heads to pieces for the seed. The plaintive call of the young ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... at any rate, in the 'land o' cakes' who can admire and appreciate their marvellous early singers, and whose admiration for The Lord of the Isles and the verses To a Mountain Daisy does not blind them to the exquisite beauties of The Testament of Cresseid, The Thistle and the Rose, and the Dialog betwix Experience and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... an innermost speck Of silver, singing afloat Beneath the night, Like balls of thistle-down Wandering up and down Over the whispering town ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... McCarthy (author of "Out-of-Doors" and "Gods and Devils"), and to Robert Loveman, best known for his felicitous "Rain Song," a poem too well known to be quoted here. Any poet who has ever lived might have been proud to have written that poem. It goes as lightly as thistle-down, yet is freighted with thought. Its philosophy is so sublimated and so natural and easy that we are likely to forget that it has any philosophy at all. The fifty or more stanzas of his "Gates of Silence" are probably far less well known. Let me ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... poor as Christ was—kindly, too, It seems so strange the thistle, hatred, grew To whip your tender backs, with great ado, Because you ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... The slim marsh-thistle's purple plume Droops tasselled on the stem, The golden hawkweeds pierce like flame The grass that ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... great-grandfather, Lord Mackenzie of Kintail, in his lands in the Lordship of Ardmeanach and in the Earldom of Ross; was made a member of the Privy Council by James II. on his accession to the throne in 1685, and chosen a Knight Companion of the Thistle, on the revival of that ancient Order in 1687. The year after the Revolution Seaforth accompanied his Royal master to France, but when that Prince returned to Ireland in the following year to make a final effort for the recovery of ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... wizened shrub, a starveling bough, A fleecy thistle filched from by the wind, A weed, Pan's trampling ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... growing out of a Plant, or somewhat like the hairs of Animals) as there is to be found amongst small shrubs that compose bushes; but for the most part, they consist of small transparent parts, some of which grow in the shape of small Needles or Bodkins, as on the Thistle, Cowag-ecod and Nettle; others in the form of Cat's claws, as in Cliders, the beards of Barley, the edges of several sorts of Grass and Reeds, &c. in other, as Coltsfoot, Rose-campion, Aps, Poplar, Willow, and almost all other ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... geniuses. The poet is a tree that may be blown about by all winds and watered by every fall of dew; and bears his works as his fruit, as the fablier of old bore his fables. Why attach one's self to a master, or graft one's self upon a model? It were better to be a bramble or a thistle, fed by the same earth as the cedar and the palm, than the fungus or the lichen of those noble trees. The bramble lives, the fungus vegetates. Moreover, however great the cedar and the palm may be, it is not with the sap one sucks from them that one can become great one's self. A giant's ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... back to the Little Country to be counsellor at law to its people in time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children. Solon could direct large affairs acceptably, but he and his babes were as thistle-down in ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... west wind had increased suddenly, a cold steady wind, coasting down the Argentine pampas, bending the sparse trees and giant thistle, ruffling the river, shallowing it, until to-morrow many a poor sailorman would regret his optimistic anchorage ... Shane shivered.... To-morrow October would be making a din in the streets.... And the poor skippers fighting their way round the Horn, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... mossy passes, Saucy grasshoppers Leapt about the grasses And the thistle-burs; And the whispered chuckle Of the katydid Shook the honeysuckle Blossoms where ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; and then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and whacked ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... is as safe from hungry cattle as though fenced in by barbed wire. A cow must be starving that would care to flavor her luncheon with the needles that the thistle bears. The common skunk cabbage would make a tempting meal for her after a winter of dry feeding, had not Nature given it an odor that disgusts even a spring-time appetite. The milkweed welcomes the bees and flies that help to distribute her ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... being! No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball—bestride the stick— (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk, (He's got the scissors, snipping ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon recognized as her aunt, Marie Josephte ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... where we should suppose it to be a very common and noxious weed, from the name there given it of Fico del inferno, or the Devil's Fig: it has long been introduced to this country; GERARD, who cultivated it with success, ludicrously attributes its nickname to a different source: "The golden Thistle of Peru, called in the West-Indies, Fique del inferno, a friend of mine brought it unto me from an iland there, called Saint Johns Iland, among other seedes, what reason the inhabitants there have to call it so it is unto me unknown, unless it be bicause of his fruite, which ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... which is a well-known and very useful vegetable in England, comes from the root of a species of sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus). It has nothing to do with the real artichoke, which is a huge and gorgeous thistle, and it has equally nothing to do with Jerusalem. The English people have always taken a special delight in mispronouncing and corrupting words in order to produce as much confusion as possible in their names for things. Jerusalem is a corruption of Girasole, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... me like a little white lily of the valley, all pure and sweet, but I was no more fit to be with her than a prickly thistle. I loved dearly to tease her. Once she had some bronze shoes, and I wanted some too, but there were none to be had in town, and to console myself, I said to dear little Fel, "I'd twice rather have black shoes, bronzes look so rusty; O, my! If I couldn't ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... literally, but really Carthamus creticus, a thistle-like plant used for making spindles (Sprengel ap. L. & S.), the Euonymous europaeus being our spindle-tree. Aristot. "H. A." ix. ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... or more of them. In districts where, as far as the eye can see, the plains are as level and smooth as a bowling-green, especially in winter when the grass is close-cropped, and where the rough giant-thistle has not sprung up, these mounds appear like brown or dark spots on a green surface. They are the only irregularities that occur to catch the eye, and consequently form an important feature in the scenery. In some places they are so ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
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