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Mossy

adjective
(compar. mossier; superl. mossiest)
1.
Overgrown with moss.  Synonym: moss-grown.
2.
(used pejoratively) out of fashion; old fashioned.  Synonyms: fogyish, moss-grown, stick-in-the-mud, stodgy.



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"Mossy" Quotes from Famous Books



... himself in his new position, he bends down, and trying not to get the water into his mouth, begins fumbling with his right hand among the roots. Getting entangled among the weeds and slipping on the mossy roots he finds his hand in contact with the sharp pincers of ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... not?— Thou soul of some benighted child That perished, crying in the wild! Or lost, forlorn, and wandering maid, By love allured, by love betrayed, Whose spirit with her latest sigh Arose, a little winged cry, Above her chill and mossy bier! "Dear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... through the mossy green, Up-curling and springing, See trees circling round them, And the straight brook like a lily-stem: Hear the water laughing At the stern old pine-tree Who keeps sighing to himself all day long What's the ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling

... summer days. But it's what the grain needs, and who am I to look this gift-horse of heat in the face. Yet there are two things, I must confess, in which the prairie is sadly lacking. One is trees; and the other is shade, the cool green sun-filtering shade of woodlands where birds can sing and mossy little brooks can babble. I've been longing all day for just an hour up in an English cherry tree, with the pectoral smell of the leaves against my face and the chance of eating at least half my own weight of fresh fruit. But even in the matter of its treelessness, I'm told, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... march led up the mountain over a fairly steep trail, a gale accompanied by rain meeting us as we came out from the timber on to the high mossy plateau. The wind swept down from the hills in great gusts, and our small tent tugged and pulled at its stakes until I greatly feared it would not stand the strain. It had moderated somewhat by the next morning, and we made an ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake at Grasmere and threw pebbles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... when she saw at the end of the room a bright and dazzling Christmas tree, she forgot all else. It was such a glittering, shining affair, all wonderful ornaments and gleaming tinsel, and was a joy to look upon, from the flying angel at the tip-top to the group of sheep on a mossy pasture at the foot. The impossible had happened. Faith and works had triumphed. The might of the mustard seed's strength had been proved, and Marian dropped on her knees before the marvelous vision. "Oh, I am so happy, Lord. I am so much obliged to you ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard

... the mouldering walls. The interior of the crumbling structure was a wilderness of rank grass and weeds, the elysium of reptiles, iguanas, centipedes, and ten thousand poisonous insects. On our left, opposite the falling church, was another ruin; but its vulgar features owned none of the green and mossy dignity of age, which gave a melancholy beauty to the former. It was a glaring pile of naked dust and rubbish, and its shot crumbled walls and riddled doors told the tale of its destruction. The entire front on that side of the plaza was in ruins, with the exception of one stout building ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... Moths, your gold-eyed plumage furl, Bow your wide horns, your spiral trunks uncurl; Glitter, ye Glow-worms, on your mossy beds; Descend, ye Spiders, on your lengthen'd threads; Slide here, ye horned Snails, with varnish'd shells; 30 Ye Bee-nymphs, listen in your ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their rough sides, while the passage of cold winters and wet springs had left the plaster ornamentation mossy and broken. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... wander through the broom, And o'er the flowery lea; While simmer wafts her rich perfume, Frae yonder hawthorn tree: There, on yon mossy bank we 'll rest, Where we 've sae aften been; Clasp'd to each other's throbbing breast— Sweet Bet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... young women in a small "frame-house" on Cape Cod. Ransom learned from Doctor Prance that her mortal remains were to be committed to their rest in the little cemetery at Marmion, in sight of the pretty sea-view she loved to gaze at, among old mossy headstones of mariners and fisher-folk. She had seen the place when she first came down, when she was able to drive out a little, and she had said she thought it must be pleasant to lie there. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? KEATS, Lines on ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... perpetually swinging censer of flower incense rising from below. The farm had put on its gayest bridal raiment; and looking at the old farm-house shadowed with foliage and green with creeping vines, it was difficult to conceive that snow had ever lain on its porches, or icicles swung from its mossy eaves. ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... her feet, And the day is fading down to the night, And close at her pillow, and round and sweet, The red rose burns like a lamp a-light. Under and over, the gray mist lops, And down and down from the mossy eaves, And down from the sycamore's long wild leaves, The slow rain drops ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... came to a place where the road turned through a small patch of woods. It was green and shady, and enlivened by a lively chatterbox of a brook. There was a mossy trunk of a tree that had fallen beside it, and made a pretty seat. The moonlight lay in little patches upon it, as it streamed down through the branches of the trees. It was a fairy-looking place, and Mary ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the brave brute did. The grass was so sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful; the brooks looked so clear, he longed to pause for a drink; renewed force and reviving youth filled his loyal veins with their fire; he could have thrown himself down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back. But he would yield to none of these longings; he held on for his master's sake, and tried to think, as he ran, that this was only a piece of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... speed was golden. But every step met its obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers, brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath, footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait were certainly ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... little brown French classic, Pharamond, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... directly, and I have no hesitation in confessing that it was the most uncomfortable meal I ever ate. But I kept my fears to myself, and only once was caught by Gunson looking anxiously around at the slope clotted with tree, bush, and clump of mossy rock, when his smile made me turn to my tin ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... you might have seen a quaintly despondent little figure, whose curly head issued from a hooded cloak, staggering hopelessly from a hammock, and seating herself on a mossy stump. From the limpness of her attitude and the pathetic expression of her eyes, I fear Polly was reviewing former happy nights spent on spring-beds; and at this particular moment the realities of camping-out hardly equalled ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... with erect heads, sentinelled the street, gay lifeguards of autumn; through dark green cedars the crimson creeper threaded its sprays of blood-red; birches, gilded to their tops, swayed to every wind, and drooped their graceful boughs earthward to shower the mossy sward with glittering leaves; heavy oaks turned purple-crimson through their wide-spread boughs; and the stately chestnuts, with foliage of tawny yellow, opened wide their stinging husks to let the nuts fall for squirrel and blue-jay. Splendid sadness clothed all the world, opal-hued ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy bark and scanty foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is not worthy of immortality. Nothing else, indeed, is worthy of it; and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time. Apple-trees, on the other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... wood—not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with crocuses. It looked like an enchanted wood in ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... was That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod First covered o'er and taught this aged tree With its dark arms to form a circling bower, I well remember.—He was one who owned No common soul. In youth by science nursed And led by nature into a wild scene Of lofty hopes, he to the world went forth, ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... very prominent in society should not make herself too common; she should not appear in too many charades, private theatricals, tableaux, etc. She should think of the "violet by the mossy stone." She must, also, at a watering-place remember that every act of hers is being criticised by a set of lookers-on who are not all friendly, and she must, ere she allow herself to be too much of a belle, remember to ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... a pail and ran off, ready to be useful; but, while he waited for the bucket to fill down among the mossy stones, he looked about him, well pleased with all he saw,—the small brown house with a pretty curl of smoke rising from its chimney, the little sisters sitting in the sunshine, green hills and newly-planted ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... In the mossy woods live a large, yellowish, black-spotted Limax, and two Helices of middling size. In the bay itself are found a few of the gilled snails with spiral shells; and a considerable number on the outward coast, which is washed by ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) (Mossy-Cup Oak, Over-Cup Oak). Large-sized tree. Heartwood "oak" brown, sapwood lighter color. Wood heavy, strong, close-grained, durable in contact with the soil. Used in ship- and boatbuilding, all sorts of construction, interior finish of houses, cabinet work, tight cooperage, carriage and wagon ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... improvement of the Intellect, 6. In rainy weather the feet should be protected by overshoes or galoches 7. hark they are coming! 8. A, neat, simple and manly style is pleasing to Us. 9. alas poor thing alas, 10. i fished on a, dark, and cool, and mossy, trout stream. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... this species on the low, mossy and sheltered hills along the dreary coast of Labrador. In the midst of the mosses and lichens that covered the rocks the bird imbedded its nest, composed of fine grasses, arranged in a circular form and lined with the feathers ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... which helped to maintain them in the respectability and comfort becoming their position in life. But in London they never forgot the old home, and wrote so much about it in their stories, that there was not a flower, or shrub, or tree, or hedge, or mossy bank redolent in early spring of primroses and violets, to which they had not given, to my boyish eyes, a glory and a charm. This reference to painting reminds me of a feature of my young days, not without interest, in connection ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... with light Gas the lamps nocturnal feed, 190 Which dance and glimmer o'er the marshy mead; Shine round Calendula at twilight hours, And tip with silver all her saffron flowers; Warm on her mossy couch the radiant Worm, Guard from cold dews her love-illumin'd form, 195 From leaf to leaf conduct the virgin light, Star of the earth, and diamond of the night. You bid in air the tropic Beetle burn, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... specially fine in size, and delicious in flavour. These and sloes were the only two we recognised, and we took especial care to go in for none of the others; wisely deciding that it was better to confine ourselves to the known. After traversing a virgin forest—soft, mossy, and velvety to the naked feet—and now and again wading muddy streams, studded with artificial islets, composed of roots and other debris—in fact floating islands—we at length came out into a clearing, in which was a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... and gravel and shale had disappeared; all was bare clean-washed rock. In many places the brook failed as a trail, for it leaped down in white sheets over mossy cliffs. Hare faced these walls in despair. But Wolf led on over the ledges and Silvermane followed, nothing daunted. At last Hare shrank back from a hole which defied him utterly. Even Wolf hesitated. The canyon ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... move for some time, for life seemed still flickering about the parted lips. At length the stillness could not be mistaken, and I laid his head softly on a mossy stone, and closed his eyes; then I looked round and saw Basil leaning against the rock, watching me with an expression of sullen misery in his face. My heart smote me, for after all he had never intended to hurt John, and it had been partly the poor fellow's ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... course—the intervals varied. Leaping from stone to stone to cross a brook, using his arms to maintain a balance, a man can not pause; and his difficulty increases as he leaps—he grows more and more confused, and finds it all the while harder to keep upright. What he fears is a mossy stone and a rolling stone. The small cakes of ice were as slippery as a mossy stone in a brook, and as treacherously unstable as a rolling stone; and in two particulars they were vastly more difficult to deal with; they were ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... suddenly; and he signed to Don to lie down and to Jem to keep watch, while he lay down at once in the mossy nook close to the river, and hidden ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... prophesied thus, a lad passed on an ass. Paphnutius ordered him to descend, seated Thais on the ass, and led it by the bridle. Towards evening they came to a canal shaded by fine trees; he tied the ass to the trunk of a date palm, and sitting on a mossy stone he shared with Thais a loaf, which they ate with salt and hyssop. They drank fresh water in their hands, and talked of things eternal. ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... are consumed upon the journey. It might be made in less time; but the party prefer to take it easily, and at midday make a halt by a running stream, where, seated upon a fallen log or mossy bank, they open their well-stored baskets, and dine. The horses utter impatient whinnies as their drivers dip their buckets into the sparkling water of the little stream, and, when these are lifted to their heads, thirstily thrust ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... thou think, sometimes when thou art singing, Of thy wild haunt upon the mountain's brow, Where thou wert wont to list the heath-bells ringing, And sail upon the sunset's amber glow? When thou art weary of thy oft-told theme, Say, dost thou think of the clear pebbly stream, Upon whose mossy brink thy fellows play, Dancing in circles by the moon's soft beam, Hiding in blossoms from the sun's fierce gleam, Whilst thou, in darkness, sing'st thy life away? And canst thou feel when the spring-time returns, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... her father's death she had never gone there except as a visitor on public days. But the tradition was always in her memory that once she had lived in those pleasant rooms, had run up and down those broad sunny stairs, and played on the spacious lawns of that mossy, tree-shadowed garden. In the orchard had assembled, besides the children, a group of their ex-teachers—Miss Semple and her sister, the village dressmakers, Miss Genet, the daughter at the post-office, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... the branches, walking in so uncertain a place was attended with a good deal of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to broken legs, but broken necks also were an easy possibility by the chance of a slip upon the mossy edge of one or another of the many ledges, followed by a spin through the air ending suddenly upon the jagged rocks below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began to think that the Indians had spoken ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... a little brook running in and out among the trees, and it sounded like music when it went over the stones. Well, they sat down on the grass, near a mossy old stump, and ate their lunch, until there wasn't even so much as a crumb of a jam tart left. They had just gotten through when, all of a sudden, they heard a big noise. It was like some one stamping his feet down and ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis

... like some form of nymph Or naiad, on the mossy, purpled bank Of her wild woodland stream, that at her feet Linger'd, and play'd, and dimpled, as in love. Or like those shapes that on the western clouds Spread gold-dropp'd plumes, and sing to harps ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... rills have cut great gorges deep into the rocky ribs of the tightly hugging hills. Another turn and he sees the hearty herds transforming themselves automatically into gold for their happy owners; another turn shows the lazy rivers arising from their age-long beds and mossy couches to climb the hot hillsides and to toil and sweat at the command of the lord of this world, as they irrigate his arid acres. Yet another turn and the wrathful river is carrying on its breast the tens of thousands of winter-cut ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... with trees and waving foliage, but with long chimneys and smoking steam-engines. The time was also beyond his memory when Sedgeley was a rural district. The right hon. gentleman would find there no mossy fountains, no bubbling brooks; the only thing at all like them which he could find there would be the torrents of boiling water which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... only a few crumbled Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock, Or a squared stone, lying mossy where it tumbled! Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock What once was firelit floor and private charm Where, seen in a windowed picture, hills were fading At dusk, and all was memory-coloured and warm, And voices talked, secure from the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers, straying among the low hillocks, and reading the mementos graven on the few mossy headstones. I noticed them because as they saw us they passed around to the back of the church; and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side aisle door and witness the ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my face, from which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... voic'd Quire below, In Service high, and Anthems cleer, As may with sweetnes, through mine ear, Dissolve me into extasies, And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes. And may at last my weary age Find out the peacefull hermitage, The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell 170 Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew, And every Herb that sips the dew; Till old experience do attain To somthing like prophetic strain. These pleasures Melancholy give, And I with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... this little pinch of warmth the different groups retired to their respective rooms. Our hostess hospitably offered us her assistance in undressing, according to Icelandic usage; but on our gracefully declining, she insisted no longer, and I was able at last to curl myself up in my mossy bed. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... and a young lady who is just now blooming into the maturity of womanhood, are toiling up a gentle slope, where the spring sun lies warmly. The old man totters, though he leans heavily upon his cane; and he pants as he seats himself upon a mossy rock that crowns the summit of the slope. As he recovers breath, he draws the hand of the lady in his, and with a trembling eagerness he points out an old mansion that lies below under the shadow of tall ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... laugh and sing and shout to each other as they gather the smooth brown nuts, filling their baskets, and running to pour them into the great bags! It is merry autumn work. The sun looks down upon them through the yellow leaves, and the rocks give them mossy seats; while here and there comes a bird or a squirrel to see what these strange people are doing in ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews

... own mind a beautiful breezy town, high set on a peaked hill, in fresh and mossy country. She had envisaged the mountains to her soul as clad with shady woods, and strewn with huge boulders under whose umbrageous shelter bloomed waving masses of the pretty pale blue Apennine anemones she saw sold in big bunches at the street ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... strange thoughts wandered through her head. At last she got up, and for a minute or two she was hidden from his gaze; then he saw her again, wearing a Mother Hubbard, and with her little bare feet she stepped delicately over the mossy bank. She came to the water's edge, and softly, without a splash, let herself down. She swam about quietly, and there was something not quite of a human being in the way she swam. He did not know why it affected him so queerly. He waited till she clambered out. She stood for a moment with ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... a sign to the deaf and dumb driver of the carriage, whom he touched on the arm. The latter dismounted, took the leaders by the bridle, and led them over the velvet sward and the mossy grass of a winding alley, at the bottom of which, on this moonless night, the deep shades formed a curtain blacker than ink. This done, the man lay down on a slope near his horses, who, on either side, kept nibbling ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... immense hills and moels. On I walked at a round pace, the sun scorching me sore, along a dusty, hilly road, now up, now down. Nothing could be conceived more cheerless than the scenery around. The ground on each side of the road was mossy and rushy—no houses—instead of them were neat stacks, here and there, standing in their blackness. Nothing living to be seen except a few miserable sheep picking the wretched herbage, or lying panting on the shady side of the peat clumps. At length I saw something ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there is little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full budding branches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hook levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briery knolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the rustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter benefactor, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... the hollow beneath him, and upon the slope a few little stunted trees, which he fancied resembled the juniper he had seen among the ranges of British Columbia, but he could see no sign of any kind of life. What was more portentous, the mossy sod he stood upon was frozen, and there were smears of snow among the straggling firs upon a rather higher ridge. Inland, the little breeze seemed to have fallen dead away, and there was an oppressive silence which the rumble of the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... they reached the woods, Betty sought out a mossy seat under an old tree, and, taking her work from her pocket, began to sew as industriously as if she ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... glorious walk, from Dumbarton to Loch Lomond, through this enchanting valley. The air was mild and clear; a few light clouds occasionally crossing the sun, chequered the hills with sun and shade. I have as yet seen nothing that in pastoral beauty can compare with its glassy winding stream, its mossy old woods, and guarding hills—and the ivy-grown, castellated towers embosomed in its forests, or standing on the banks of the Leven—the purest of rivers. At a little village called Renton, is a monument to Smollett, but the inhabitants seem to neglect his memory, as one ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged, like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a bright green coat—a heavy man with a fat, colourless face and puffy eyes, and Paul, glancing up at the ostentatious approach, recognized in him a nouveau riche whom a political friend had insisted on introducing in ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... of Solyma! begin the song: To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, The dreams of Pindus and th' Aonian maids, Delight no more—O thou my voice inspire Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire! Rapt into future times, the bard begun: A Virgin shall ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... of which black swans majestically floated, and the graceful water-fowl, with their tender broods covered with silken down, darted restlessly in every direction, in pursuit of the insects among the reeds, or the fogs in their mossy retreats. Perhaps it might have been the enormous hollies, with their dark and tender green foliage; or the bridges uniting the banks of the canals in their embrace; or the fawns browsing in the ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... love, when it was an ethereal sentiment of adoration and not a passion, and of friendship, when it was a passion and not an expedience,—of dear and simple adventures, and of comrades who had part in them,—of dappled mornings, and serene and glowing sunsets,—of sequestered nooks and mossy seats in the old wood,—of paths by the riverside, and flowers that smiled a bright welcome to our rambling,—of lingering departures from home, and of old by-ways, overshadowed by trees and hedged with roses and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... threshold of Morgraunt. As a fact it was no more than an outstretched finger of its hand, by name Cadnam Thicket. He skirted this place, seeking an entry, but found nothing to suit him for an hour or more. Then at last he came to a gap in the sandy bank, and saw that a little mossy ride ran straight in among the trees. He put his horse at the gap, and was soon cantering happily through the wood. Thus he came short upon an adventure. The path ran ahead of him in a tapering vista, but just where it should meet in a point it broadened out suddenly ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... impulsively to his feet, bracketted his field glasses on the third peak, and stood there, poised, slim and upright against the sky on the chasm's mossy edge. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... at once. He knelt down on a mossy bank, and there, with the glorious prospect of the beautiful wilderness before him, and the setting sun irradiating his still haggard countenance, held communion ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... cover All the slender willows over! And on the banks of mossy green Star-like primroses are seen; And, their clustering leaves below, White ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... the winter winds are not to blame: the soft, gentle breezes of the perpetual summer have wrought the havoc, leaving, however, a not unpleasing picture of dark, cool, mossy ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... mounted with cannon, protected the humble buildings erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the Custom-house Square. The little stream—not much more than a rivulet except in spring—which for many years rippled between green, mossy banks, now ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... living can conceive how mossy and dried-up and gnarled and black and unlike a human being such an old plain-dweller could be. The skin was so drawn over brow and cheeks, that he looked almost like a death's-head, and one saw only by a faint gleam in the hollows of the eye sockets ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... wealth of stores and palaces, and lift their church spires and domes of public edifices high to the blazing sun. Dame Nature lends enchantment to the view by the freshness and beauty of her inimitable landscape. Green and mossy meadow, rich, cultivated upland, luxurious gardens, sweet shady grottos and cozy dells, orchards, forests, farms, with almost every variety of natural scenery, enliven the prospect beyond description; and last, though not least of all, a beautiful river pursues its serpentine ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... speaks thus of his army after he had established his camps and the subsistence trains began to forage in the rich valleys of the French Broad and Chucky Rivers and along the banks of Mossy Creek: ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... courtyard Hidden away In the afternoon. Grey walks, Mossy stones, Copper carp swimming lazily, And beyond, A faint toneless hissing echo of rain That tears at ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher

... friends went off for a holiday, but he stuck to his work. The heat of Paris was faint and smothering. On the first Sunday he went out to St. Germain, loveliest of all the Parisian suburbs, and wandered all day in the green and mossy forest. He was lonely and depressed. Not even the cool verdure of the woods, nor the splendour of the view from the terrace looking out over the curves of the Seine, and the green rolling hills, and the lines of light that led to the city beginning to glow with a ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... anemones, such as he had given his gentle enemy. It was tilting there in the breeze above the unkempt grass, and the grass was beginning to feel the spring, and to stir and stretch itself after its winter sleep; it was sprinkled with violets, but these he did not molest. He came back to a stained and mossy stone bench on the avenue, fronting a pair of rustic youths carved in stone, who had not yet finished some game in which he remembered seeing them engaged when he was there before. He had not walked fast, but he had walked ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... yourself, dear Cora," he answered, as he gently laid her down on the mossy rocks, and went and brought her water from the spring in ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... ladies had floated away together between the mossy stems, under the canopies of blossoms; Rowland had fallen behind and joined the waiting Amanda, and the two were now flitting about like moths in the moonshine; Dorothy and Dr. Bayly had halted in an open spot, like a moonlight ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... merely an idle saunter, to help to kill the time between this and Sunday, dearest girl. Now, rest you, my queen! my queen! upon this mossy rock, as on a throne, while I ride forward and leave my horse. I will be with you again in fifteen minutes; in the meantime here is something for you to look at," he said, drawing from his pocket an elegant little volume bound in purple and gold, and laying it in her lap. He then smiled, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old watermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to turn. An ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two country boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down; and all about the steps down which the ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... rebuilt in 1867 from the materials of the older church, two miles away at Church Norton, where the chancel still remains among its old mossy tombs. Each stone and beam was placed in the same position on the new site. The old chancel at Church Norton contains a battered tomb to John Lewes and his wife (1537). Near-by is a mediaeval rectory, once a priory, dating from the fourteenth century, very quaint ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... a village inn, and ate our simple luncheon; and now we stood in some hamlet lane, or by its mossy well, with a group of children about us, among whom not a child appeared more child-like or more delighted than the old man. Nay, as we came back from a fifteen or twenty miles' stroll, he would leap over a stile with the activity of a boy, or run up to a wilding bush, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... the river the gorge becomes narrow and more thickly wooded; the path winding along it is hot and close and still; the water is clear brown in its depths, and green in the shallows and where it slides over a mossy stone; it bubbles into foam in its tiny waterfalls and cataracts and miniature whirlpools; it is deliciously sweet and cool. The green moss grows to the very edge of its white stones, and ferns and ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... was damp and chill, but she put on her hat and ran out into the park. She went down the avenue and turned into a coppice. There, among the wet bracken, she sank down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree and huddled herself in a small heap, her head ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... cease to sing, Cosy are they in the mossy nest, Birdies like we, dear, Weary must be, dear, Glad in the gloaming ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous

... hill and hallow'd grot, By mossy wood and marshy glen, Whence rang of old the rifle-shot, And hurrying shout of Marion's men! The groan of breaking hearts is there— The falling lash—the fetter's clank! Slaves—SLAVES are breathing in that air, Which old ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark

... to the edge of the water was irresistible. It babbled with such delicious coolness between its ferns. The mossy pathway gleamed emerald green. Surely there was no need for haste! She could afford to give herself five minutes in her paradise. Violet certainly would not be ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... upon his right, a little out of his road, he perceived a pretty fountain which partly veiled a natural grotto. A path led to it, and this path had for Gilbert an irresistible attraction. He seated himself upon the margin of the fountain, resting his feet upon a mossy stone. This ought to be his last halt, for night was approaching. Under the influence of the bubbling waters, Gilbert resumed his dreamy soliloquy, but his meditations were presently interrupted by ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... come cautiously around that bending hill, you may catch a glimpse of the great Pan himself. When the moonlight showers filled the forests with a magical light, one might see the untouched Artemis gliding rapidly among the mossy trunks. Beneath, in the deep abysses of earth, reigned the gloomy Pluto with the sad Persephone, home-sick for the upper air. By the sea-shore Proteus wound his horn, the Sirens sang their fatal song among the rocks, the Nereids and Oceanides gleamed beneath the green waters, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... the loud singing of the birds. Light of heart the boy started from his mossy couch and wondered at that tuneful chorus. The dawning day trembled through the trees still half-bare, for it was the ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... juggler, eh? And now she's on the stage? Some jump for Nellie! But, honest now, Higgins, you don't mean to spring one of them mossy 'Way Down East drammers on me as the true dope? Come now, don't tell me you and she used to go to ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... low-limbed shrubberies, there to swelter and keep warm the rootlets of the newly planted weigelias and spruces, until the snows and February suns and April mists and May heats shall have transmuted them into fat and unctuous mould. A close, pelting, unceasing rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof, testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to an exuberant gush,—a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, wondering what drift ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... A mossy footfall in this wood A peal of thunder were, Or autumn tempest-shriek, compared With the unwhispered stir Of massy fluids lift in air, To build ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... top of the Caldon-Low The mists were cold and gray, And nothing I saw but the mossy stones That ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... shady dell, Where the soft breezes swell, And beautiful wood-sprites by pearly streams wander— Where the sweet perfume breathes, O'er angel twined wreaths, Luxuriantly blooming the mossy trees under— Here, beneath the bright vine Whose leaves intertwine, I'm dreaming of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... eastward would strike the Orkneyan skerries and pass through Stromness. All untouched by the development of that busy continent to the south which has grown up within its lifetime, Chipewyan is a little pearl of the periwigged days of the early Georges. From its red sands, tamarack swamps, and mossy muskeg one almost expects to see arise the forms of those great of old who outfitted here, making Chipewyan the base of their northward explorations. The ghostly company is a goodly one—Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Sir George Simpson, and Sir John Franklin (their honorary ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... on the soft, mossy turf, and half closed her eyes, purring gently. She was a young cat, and got into much trouble at home, for she was constantly quarrelling with her brothers and sisters. She said it was their fault, and they said it was hers. And Mrs. Grimalkin, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... paused before entering upon the solitude of his friend, and would fain have rested his weary limbs on the mossy banks of the slope, but remembering how nearly Father Philip was to death he overruled his feelings, and, brushing through the ivy covering of the doorway, he entered quietly into the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... remote epochs—even more persistent than that which woman gives to household utensils—were now dirty, overlaid with the marks of endless use, with the wreckage of unavoidable neglect. The wheels were deformed with mud, the metal darkened by the smoke of explosion, the gray paint spotted with mossy dampness. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... he had seen in the distance, he moved into their refreshing shade. They were broad-branched elms, luxuriantly full of foliage, and the avenue they formed extended for about a quarter of a mile. Cool dells and dingles of mossy green sloped down on one side of the road, breaking into what are sometimes called "coombs" running precipitously towards the sea-coast, and slackening his pace a little he paused, looking through a tangle of shrubs and bracken ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... she brought the delicate primrose opening on the mossy bank among the grey ash-stoles; the first tender green leaflet of hawthorn coming before the swallow; the garden crocus from the grass of the garden; the first green spikelet from the sward of the meadow; the beautiful ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... a mossy town that gathers about the Russian chapel. All the old houses were built to last (as they are likely to do) for many generations to come. They are log-houses—the public buildings, the once fashionable officers' club, and many of the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... walls of gray stone, half covered with clinging ficus, spanned by broken arches, with here and there a fallen urn, led them through picturesque turns and by mossy steps to the foot of the huge black cross erected before the empty church. Neither spoke; they did not care for words and the only expression which framed itself audibly was that oft repeated jubilate of health and youth, "How beautiful it is ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison

... desolate coast, exposed to the fury of the winds, one marvels at our modern craze for the sea; not merely to come and gaze upon and listen to it, to renew our youth in its salt, exhilarating waters and to lie in delicious idleness on the warm shingle or mossy cliff; but to be always, for days and weeks and even for months, at all hours, in all weathers, close to it, with its murmur, "as of one in pain," for ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... in the quiet of a mossy graveyard, nor in a church where priests mumble unmeaning words at fixed times, nor yet alone on the mountain-side—for he chafed at solitude—but he should have been buried at sea. In the midst of storm and driving sleet, at midnight, the sails should have been lowered, the great engines stopped, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... bits of English landscape scenery peep out along the pages, as one turns the leaves of this beautiful collection. An old village church rising among the graves of centuries, a bird's-nest snug and warm in the boughs of a mossy tree, a group of old-time worshippers gathered on the grass, a brook making its way through flower-enamelled banks, a shepherd with his flock couched on the hill-side, and other similar scenes of quiet and rest, abound in this volume. The printer and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... roads curl through the rolling hills like ribbons of dental cream squeezed out evenly on rich green velour. Chateaux, pearl white centres in settings of emerald green, push their turrets and bastions above the mossy plush of the mountain side. Lazy little streams silver the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... the drops gleamed and fell. Thus Tarn the hunter took me to the world that faces across the sea of the west on the gate of Munra-O. And so it was that there grew upon me the glamour of the hunt, though I had forgotten Tarn, and took me into mossy places and into dark woods, and I became the cousin of the wolf and looked into the lynx's eyes and knew the bear; and the birds called to me with half-remembered notes, and there grew in me a deep love of great rivers and of all western seas, and a distrust of cities, ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... and fragrance and beauty, under the dark, solemn cypress trees that stand like ever-watchful sentinels. When Keats was buried here (in 1820), Shelley wrote of "the romantic and lovely cemetery ... under the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the mossy walls and towers now mouldering and desolate which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered even in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... their sandwiches by a prairie slew: long grass reaching up out of clear water, mossy bogs, red-winged black-birds, the scum a splash of gold-green. Kennicott smoked a pipe while she leaned back in the buggy and let her tired spirit be absorbed in the Nirvana of the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just "kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear of Nimrod ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... sit here," Selden suggested, as they reached an open ledge of rock above which the beeches rose steeply between mossy boulders. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... road along which he had travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise. He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage. In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories, out-flung to the sea. On his right, a little farm, with its cluster of out-buildings, nestled in the bosom of the hills. On either side, the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... over them through the green ambrosial foliage of the tree whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass, cross-legged at his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the ladies were busy with ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... to a hollow in the mossy rocks, and it had a roof woven out of rushes. Inside an ox was chewing the hay it had eaten out of the manger. A brown ass stood near by and licked the ox's big head. There was still some hay left in the manger and in the corner was a ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... the sycamore, where an old oak had fallen, the rotting stump was hidden by a high "rockery," edged with conch shells, and over the rough gray rocks a tangle of garden flowers ran wild—sweet-william, petunias, phlox, and the mossy stems of red and yellow portulaca. On the western side of the house there was a spreading mimosa tree, its sensitive branches brushing the green shutters of a window in ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... arrayed in white hose, beautifully clocked, and those precious slices, and my poor conscience tortured about my vanity. The girls also exchanged theirs for morocco slippers. We concealed our walking shoes under a mossy log and proceeded to ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... had the fine grounds, with their soft mossy sloping lawns, and tranquil brimful waters and shadowy groves of oak and elm, great immemorial trees, looked lovelier than they did that day to greet their long ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... if I preferred to he would run back in and hug the shore. Hug it! I was ready to kiss it! What I wanted to do was to take that dear shore in both arms and press my throbbing cheeks against her mossy breast, and swear that nothing should ever again come between me and the solid part of the continent of ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... stream, Ulysses found A mossy bank with pliant rushes crown'd; The bank he press'd, and gently kiss'd the ground; Where on the flowery herb as soft he lay, Thus to his soul the sage began ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... opening he could reach the rear facade of the building. He therefore entered a grassy lane, winding round a group of stones draped with ivy; and leaving the orchard on his left, he pushed on toward the garden itself—a real country garden with square beds bordered by mossy clumps alternating with currant-bushes, rows of raspberry-trees, lettuce and cabbage beds, beans and runners climbing up their slender supports, and, here and there, bunches of red carnations ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... River flow, And deep it was, with golden sand; It flowed between a mossy land With murmured music grave and low. 20 It hath refreshment for all thirst, For fainting spirits strength and rest: Earth holds not such a draught as this ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... plot of ground at Keilhau, you ought, in accordance with a remark of Barop, to cause me serious self-examination, for he said, probably with no thought of my mossy couch, "From the way in which the pupils use their plots of ground and the things they place in them, I can form a very correct opinion of their dispositions and tastes." But you, beloved couch, should have the best place in my garden if you could restore ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... silent, at attention. It knew perfectly well that she had come. It knew the moment when she entered; watched and followed her; and behind her something dropped without a sound and shut her in. Her feet upon the glades of mossy grass fell silently, as the oaks and beeches shifted past in rows and took up their positions at her back. It was not pleasant, this way they grew so dense behind her the instant she had passed. She realized that they gathered in ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... questions; so grave that she was quite at a loss how to answer them. And then she felt that somebody was looking at her; and raising her eyes, she saw Axel on the mossy path ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... Tom, on a little mossy seat in the court, every one of his button-holes stuck full of cape jessamines, and Eva, gayly laughing, was hanging a wreath of roses round his neck; and then she sat down on his knee, like a chip-sparrow, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... centuries, upon the same site where two of its predecessors had already crumbled into decay. "St. John's Church is even more ancient than the Cathedral, having been built in the eleventh century. I shall never forget its weather-beaten walls and its mossy roof. In many places, the thickness of the walls is greatly reduced by the rain and hail that have washed and beaten against it so long. In my rambles through Chester I had the good fortune of meeting and forming the acquaintance of an Irish ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... as best she could. She eat down on a mossy rock while he stripped the horses of their gear and staked them out. Then Bill started a fire and fixed the roll of bedding by it for her to sit on. Dusk crept over the forest while he cooked supper, making a bannock in the frying pan to take ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... you don't need a description; and if you have not seen them, a description would do no good. From the Falls, if you are unsophisticated, you will resume your carriage and return to the city; but if you are au fait, you will cross the high-road, cross the pastures, and wind down a damp, mossy wood-path to the steps of Montmorency,—a natural phenomenon, quite as interesting as, and more remarkable than, the Falls,—especially if you go away without seeing it. Any river can fall when it comes to a dam. In fact, there is nothing for it to do ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... last when the smiling sun Glanced down from a summer sky, And a music rang where the rivers run, And the waves went laughing by; And the rose peeped over the mossy bank While the wild deer stood ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... a glade in some forest, so deep was its shadowy gloom, so unbroken its repose; while the arrowy sun-shafts flickered patterns on the mossy footpaths, or drew a golden ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... in a long rent down the front of Raymonde's skirt, and several tears in Aveline's muslin blouse, to say nothing of wounds on wrists and ankles. There was quite a clearing in the middle, with soft, mossy grass and clumps of hemp agrimony, and actually a small apple-tree with nine apples upon it. They were green and very sour, but the girls each sampled one, with a kind of feeling that by so doing they were taking formal possession of the territory, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... Patience's as I passed; we will go and see them, if you like. But, on our way, I must tell you what happened to me as I approached the spring. I was walking upon the wet stones with my head down, guided by the slight noise of the clear little jet of water which bursts from the heart of the mossy rock. I was about to sit down on the stone which forms a natural seat at the side of it, when I saw that the place was already occupied by a good friar whose pale, haggard face was half-hidden by his cowl of coarse cloth. He seemed much frightened at my arrival; I did my best to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... commission. Imagine my surprise and disappointment at finding instead of Madame Taverneau a strange face, who gruffly announced that the post-mistress had gone away for a few days with Madame Louise Guerin. The dove had flown, leaving to mark its passage a few white feathers in its mossy nest, a faint perfume of ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... Sabbath-bells—they call us not to piles of mossy stone, Temples of yore, with age now hoar, and ivy overgrown, Through whose stained windows softly creeps a dim religious light, Seeming as it were ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... you might see The wild deer sporting on the meadow ground, And, here and there, a solitary tree, Or mossy stone, or rock with woodbine crown'd. Oft did the cliffs reverberate the sound Of parted fragments tumbling from on high; And from the summit of that craggy mound The perching eagle oft was heard to cry, Or on resounding wings ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... in after years. One would fain have the surroundings unchanged—the cot where Woodworth dwelt, the ponderous well-sweep, creaking with age, at which his youthful hands were wont to tug strongly; and finally the mossy bucket, overflowing with crystal nectar fresh from the cool depths below. Yet in spite of the changes, one gets fairly well the illusion of the ancient spot, and comes away well content to have quaffed a draught of such excellent water to the ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... spider-crab walks backward. Borrowing this creature's mossy legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington are seeking to fix these upon the Federal Constitution, to make that instrument walk backward in like style. For instance, the Constitution has never laid any legal disabilities upon woman. Whatever denials of rights it ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... the clumps of trees and scattered farm-houses, and was only divided where the Tochty ran with black, swollen stream. The great moor rose and fell in swelling billows of snow that arched themselves over the burns, running deep in the mossy ground, and hid the black peat bogs with a thin, treacherous crust. Beyond, the hills northwards and westwards stood high in white majesty, save where the black crags of Glen Urtach broke the line, and, above our lower Grampians, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... pebbles and flowers for their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of sticks, which has been built in our own Zoological Park in New York City, is fronted by a cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this it brings its colorful treasures, sometimes a score of bright star blossoms, which are renewed when faded and replaced by others. All this has, probably, something to do with courtship, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... have roamed the meadow, They have scoured the wood, Seeking nuts and blackberries, For their pleasant food. With their nuts and blackberries And bits of bread and cheese, On a mossy hedge-bank, Now they take ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various

... had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up to the open ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... what you will, and I will grant it to you,' whispered Zoulvisia with a smile, as they sat together on a mossy bank by the stream. And the king prayed her to set free the old man to whom he owed his life, and to send him back ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... them for the sake of their associations rather than themselves. His works are a casket of such stage jewels of expression as 'Palladian structure,' 'Tusculan repose,' 'Gothic pile,' 'pellucid brow,' 'mossy cell,' and 'dew-bespangled meads.' He delighted in 'hyacinthine curls' and 'lustrous locks,' in 'smiling parterres' and 'stately terraces.' He seldom sat down in print to anything less than a 'banquet', he was capable of invoking 'the iris pencil of Hope'; he could not think nor speak ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... Autumn sunshine falls so warm, So warm in the orchard green, A golden tent is the apple-tree; And under the leafy screen Sits Rex, in the curve of a mossy bough, As high as he can go, Dropping the apples red and brown To ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... some sound did come to their ears, but of an entirely different character from the one they were hoping to catch. A granddaddy bullfrog on some mossy log sent out loud and deep-toned demands for "more rum! more rum!" Then a saucy bluejay started in to scold the fellows in the boats for daring to trespass in its preserves, and how the angry bird did lay it on until they were well beyond reach ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas



Words linked to "Mossy" :   unfashionable, moss, unstylish, covered



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