"Besom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... look no further than this one neglect of the seventeenth century prelates (whether its cause was stupidity, insincerity, or fear of the monarchs to whose tyranny they pandered), to discover full reason why it pleased God to sweep them out awhile with the besom of destruction. ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... a blanket of mist covers the earth. It is so cold that the men dare not sit down during the halts, though overborne by weariness, and they pace to and fro in the damp obscurity like ghosts. The besom of a biting wintry wind whips our skin, sweeps away and scatters our ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... gone; there were no fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale had whirled it ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... some parts of England a singular custom prevails. When a married woman leaves home for a few days, the husband hangs a broom or besom from the window. When, how, and where did this originate, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... flowers, its perfume; but oh! above all, for the loving, refined, intelligent, gentle race of people it was my great, my priceless privilege, to be born amongst—a people worthy to live with, yes, worthy to die for! The stern besom of war has wept over you, beloved Natchez—your fairest homes have been desolated, your lovely gardens are now only remembrances—your family circles are broken up—your bravest sons are sleeping in the dust of death, or weeping tears of bitterness ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... said to himself bitterly, "she's putting on her Saturday face. There's trouble brewing, I doubt! It'll be Jock this and Jock that both but and ben all day long, and whatever is the use of all this tirley-wirly I can't see, when on Monday the house will look as if it had never seen the sight of a besom! I'll just bide where I am." He closed his eyes and pretended ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Buren say to Sidney Rigdon and Elias Higbee when they laid our cause before him at Washington after our Missouri persecutions—when the wicked hatred of them Missourians had as a besom of fire swept before it into exile the whipped and plundered Saints of Jackson County? Well, he said: 'Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.' That's what a President of the United States said to ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... you trod the natural soil of Paris, augmented by importations brought in upon the boots of foot passengers; here, at all seasons, you stumbled among hills and hollows of dried mud swept daily by the shopman's besom, and only after some practice could you walk at your ease. The treacherous mud-heaps, the window-panes incrusted with deposits of dust and rain, the mean-looking hovels covered with ragged placards, the grimy unfinished walls, the general air of a compromise ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... other living at this day in the deserts where Hagar wandered, and where she fainted—a never-conquered people. And while Assyrian, Greek, and Roman have swept the world and exacted tribute of the nations around them, and other tribes have been swept with the besom of destruction, the sons of Ishmael have still dwelt in the presence of their brethren, ever enforcing, but still refusing to pay tribute—free and wild as the lad who first became an archer in the wilderness. ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... of magic backwards, Break the spell that overwhelms me! You shall have my sister Aino, I will give my mother's daughter. 460 She shall dust your chamber for you, Sweep the flooring with her besom, Keep the milk-pots all in order; And shall wash your garments for you. Golden fabrics she shall weave you, And shall ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... soldiers was a sentimentalist; both believed as heartily as did Wentworth in later years that the word of the hour was Thorough. They started with their armies from Antioch in March, 67, resolved on sweeping Palestine with the besom of destruction. Cities and villages, one by one, were besieged, captured, destroyed; men, women, and children were indiscriminately massacred. The Jewish army fought every inch of the ground like tigers; ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... hoped great things—at least a letter demanding pardon from Irma, or an account of how she had confessed all from that graceless and thankless forgetful besom Charlotte. But I heard nothing further till, one day going past after another, about a twelvemonth after amazing word came. It was when I was busy with some literary work I had gotten from one of the printers in the town—correcting ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... blossoms. Before the axe or plough had touched the "oak openings" of Wisconsin, they were swept by running fires almost every autumn after the grass became dry. If from any cause, such as early snowstorms or late rains, they happened to escape the autumn fire besom, they were likely to be burned in the spring after the snow melted. But whether burned in the spring or fall, ashes and bits of charred twigs and grass stems made the whole country look dismal. Then, before a single grass-blade had sprouted, a hopeful ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... fulfilment! But perhaps there may be detected in Mr. Masson's "swept its arcs" a little of that prophetic hedging-in vagueness to which he allows so generous a latitude. How if the "two-handed engine," after all, were a broom (or besom, to be ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... one day actually to see a thing or two. Man lives by Belief (as it was well written of old); by logic he can only at best long to live. Oh, I am dreadfully, afflicted with Logic here, and wish often (in my haste) that I had the besom of destruction to lay to it ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the play says, to go tame about house, and breed, than a wife that is setting at work (my insignificant self present perhaps) every busy our my never-resting servants, those of the stud not excepted; and who, with a besom in her hand, as I may say, would be continually filling my with apprehensions that she wanted to sweep me out of my own house as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... carriage-road. Oh, were there but water! But water is the all and everything in The Desert. Encamped on the limitless plain. How variable is Saharan weather: now, at sunset, a tempest rises, and sweeps the bosom of The Desert with "the besom of destruction!" A high wind continued all night. I fancied myself at sea, but preferred the Ocean Desert, its groaning hurricane, its hideous barrenness, to the heaving and roaring of the Ocean of Waters. We passed another desert mosque; it was only a simple line, slightly curved for the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... a fool!" thought Gubblum. "He's as daft as a besom." Then Gubblum remembered with what lavish generosity he had bribed the pot-boy to no purpose. "He cover't a shilling dammish," he thought; "I'll dang his silly ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... England became the great naval power of the world; her colonial possessions, however widely dispersed, were consolidated into one vast fountain of wealth to the imperial realm; the empire of the seas was fixed on an immovable basis, and the proud Hollander compelled to take down the besom from the mast-head ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... reason this way; for in the Old Testament there is not an office, nor an office-bearer, but is distinctly determined in the making of the tabernacle; there is not a tackle, nor the quantity of it, not a curtain, nor the colour thereof, not a snuffer, nor a candlestick, nor a besom that sweeps away the filth, nor an ash-pan that keepeth the ashes, but all are particularly set down; yet, ye will not get a bishop, nor an archbishop, nor this metropolitan, nor that great and cathedral ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... silhouetted. On the red- tiled roofs, too, was a squatted population. Below, a troop of gendarmes, mounted on caracoling horses stretched in line across the square, was gradually sweeping the entire square of a packed, gesticulating, cursing crowd. The operation of this immense besom was very slow. As the spaces of the square were cleared they began to be dotted by privileged persons, journalists or law officers or their friends, who walked to and fro in conscious pride; among them Sophia descried Gerald and Chirac, strolling arm-in-arm and talking to two elaborately ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that it cast shadows at night, as distinct as those made by the moon. No such cometary monster had ever before been seen. People shuddered when they looked at it. It moved with amazing speed, sweeping across the firmament like a besom of destruction. Calculation showed that it was not more than ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... their dances. In his youth, it was said, he had sung rollickingly and danced with agility. He loved to steam himself in the bath,—and steamed himself so energetically that Irinarkh, who served him as bath-attendant, thrashed him with a birch-besom soaked in beer, rubbed him down with shredded linden bark,[40] then with a bit of woollen cloth, rolled a soap bladder over his master's shoulders,—this faithfully-devoted Irinarkh was accustomed ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... country and "jumped" a claim which adjoined ours upon the east, and was the making of a much more desirable farm than ours. He succeeded in holding the claim. A few days after our arrival a prairie fire came from the west and with a brisk wind swept the whole country with a very besom of destruction. We came near losing everything we had. Sam was a loser, quite a quantity of his hay was destroyed. Very shortly after the fire he made us an informal call and in language not the most polite but very emphatic, declared his intention ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... speaks of 'the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power.' In a lecture published in 1883, but probably delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that 'commerce was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power.'[3] The term also occurs in vol. xviii. of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' published in 1885. At p. 574 of that volume (art. Persia) we are told that Themistocles was 'the founder of the Attic sea-power.' The sense in which the term is ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... landsmen hold on to ring-bolts and belaying-pins, or cling to bulkheads for dear life, while mighty billows, thundering in-board, hiss along the decks, and everything, above, below, and around, seems being swept into eternity by the besom of destruction! ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... know her the thing she was. It could not, when she was at her worst, comport with her idea of a lady, poor as that idea was, to drink whisky till she did not know what she did next. And when the sleeping woman God made, wakes up to see in what a house she lives, she will soon grasp at besom and bucket, nor cease her cleansing while spot is left on wall or ceiling ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... beyond which could be glimpsed the eternal snows. Sometimes an avalanche slid over a slope with the distant appearance of a great white waterfall and the echo of muffled thunder. Where the mountain was swept as by a mighty besom, the pack-train kept an anxious eye on the snow {31} amid the valleys of the upper peaks; for, in an instant, the snowslide might come over the edge of the upper valley to sweep down the slope, carrying away forests, rocks, trail, pack-train and all. The story is ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... is never a lady, But the commonest wench on the street, Shuffling, shabby and shady, Shameless to pass or meet. Walk with her once—it's a weakness! Talk to her twice—it's a crime! Thrust her away when she gives you 'good day,' And the besom won't board you next time. Largesse! Largesse, Fortune! What is Your Ladyship's mood? If I've no care for Fortune, My Fortune is ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... go there. You kid, fetch this or bring that. You kid, go to the drift for water, or take the besom and sweep the stoep, or scrub out the room there—do you hear, you kid?" These orders came thick and fast when at last she was old enough to work; and she was old enough when she was very young, and did work like a little beast of burden. A real ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... but tremendous, countless millions all thinking as one from Cape Juby to the confines of China? Let a common wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may not be the besom with which Providence may sweep the rotten, decadent, impossible, half-hearted south of Europe, as it did a thousand years ago, until it makes room for ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... charge of all: 'there are a great many killed and wounded.' Not without clangour, complaint; subsequent criminal trials, and official persons dying of heartbreak! (Histoire de la Revolution, par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 58.) So, however, with steel-besom, Rascality is brushed back into its dim depths, and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... constant-quiet, preventive care, or frequent topical applications, carefully applied, would gradually renovate the whole interior. But who wishes to be cleaning all the time? Who wishes to be always dusting? Indeed, at the best, we are constantly with broom, brush, or besom in hand; but the men will not perceive it, and we receive no credit for our tidiness. What is to be done, then? Evidently there is nothing better than a "demonstration," as the politicians say—a ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... his wheel fly in a sort of frenzy of disgust, but the fresh wind, sweeping his hot face like the besom of peace, soon drove away this temporary chagrin, bringing to him the best comfort life gave in those days—the gentle influence of Nature. For, just in proportion as Dan shunned humanity he courted her, and though he felt her relentlessness through ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... get to the bottom of this," said Tommy, rising, "and as you are too great a coward, Corp, to tell the truth with that shameless woman glowering at you, out you go, Gavinia, and take your disgraced bairn with you. Do as you are told, you besom, for I am ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... as to give every aid to disciplined men as opposed to mere guerrilleros. The city is built in blocks, on the American system; the wide thoroughfares cross each other at right-angles, and all of them could be swept as with a besom by a few guns en barbette behind a breastwork at either end. In this sort of work, accuracy of aim is not called for, as in that warfare up in the mountains. If it were, not much reliance could be placed on the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... cushat, callynge lowe, Goe waken Time from sleepe: Goe whysper in his ear, that soe His besom sweepe Me to that heape Where ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... concerning religion, either in Scotland or here, albeit we have often set down mensura voti to ourselves; but he has as often moved us step after step to trace back our defections, and make the last innovations a besom to sweep out the former, and the king refused to be a mean to engage in a covenant with himself and others, and so has drawn us, against our wills, and beyond our desires, to perform our duty, and to give a testimony to his truth, that much of God and divine wisdom ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sun set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers—a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters in experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the god whose ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... Ikey entered, McMahan stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been swept back into line by a resistless besom of ballots. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... besom. I am the old woman that sweeps the cobwebs from the sky; only I'm busy with ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... it, sir," said Caesar promptly. "He's not to trust, but lend it on his heirship. Or lend it the ould man at mortgage on Ballawhaine. He's the besom of fire—it'll come to you, sir, at the father's death, and who ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... light; and raises a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out-of-doors, or made use of to kindle flames for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of silent swagger. He felt superior. His ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... ulmus' bear, And siffling mists beyond a bell That hide veiled shadows of a peak Above the stationed domes of red, Augueries of a marching pair,— Twin demons of unconquered Hell! Spell visions that the soffins leak That felt the besom of the dead, Just as the Twilight's scarlet urn Is seen from heights unfathomed, strong. There runnels of green waters cold, Toss lepers from their murky breast; There venom-oils and tapers burn To light the way of souls gone wrong,— Blood-stained each idol's crown ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... rural English HOME? The thing is as untransferable as the word is untranslatable. The antique village church, with its broad square tower or low spire, its stone porch and oak seats, its narrow casements and the many vestiges of those abominations which the besom of the blessed Reformation swept from our services, though it could not, without demolishing the building, efface their relics from its walls; the churchyard surrounding its base, with undulating hillocks of mortality clad in long, rich grass, where lie, half hidden, the old grey ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... stang. But it's for Jack Solomon, His wife he did bang. He bang'd her, he bang'd her, He bang'd her indeed, He bang'd t' poor woman Tho' shoo stood him no need. He nayther took stick, stain, wire, nor stower,(2) But he up wi' a besom an' knock'd her ower. So all ye good neighbours who live i' this raw, I pray ye tak warnin', for this is our law. An' all ye cross husbands Who do your wives bang, We'll blow for ye t' horn , An' ride for ye t' ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... appropriated, for war spares nothing. Some of the frightened people of the village were returning as we passed through, and were sadly lamenting the destruction of almost everything that could be destroyed on and about their homes by this besom of destruction,—war. Food, stock, fences, bed and bedding, etc., all gone or destroyed. Some of the houses had been perforated by the shells,—probably our own shells, aimed at the enemy. One man told me a shell had entered his house and landed on the ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... well gin in at oncet," John said to him one day, when he borrowed ten dollars for the payment of an oyster bill. "I tell you she's got more besom in her than ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... liberty; base and sensual, they will be loathed and despised; the moral Governor of the world will assert his sovereignty, and will visit a worthless and ungrateful race with the yoke of bondage, the scourge of anarchy, or the besom of destruction. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... perhaps, repeatedly touched by him while in a state of anger provoked by his laziness and distaste for his duty—why should not a quantity of his life-atoms have passed into the materials of the future besom, and therein have been recognized by Buddha, owing to his superhuman (not supernatural) powers? The processes of Nature are acts of incessant borrowing and giving back. The materialistic sceptic, however, will not take anything ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Olly, the besom-maker. "And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do I say?—why, almost without ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the winds, and if I have come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches, on the western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform has swept him out of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity, and pockets ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that curse him, though in woe our sad heart bleeds, The curse that's on him is the curse that follows wicked deeds. He suspected and he punished, he judged, and then he drew The besom of destruction our quiet homesteads through; So it's rippling in the waters, it is rustling through the air, Five hundred thousand curses ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... would have lived ecstatically at the Languedocian capital. It is a metropolis of beggardom, a mendicant's Mecca, a citadel of Jules Richepin's cherished Gueux. Here, indeed, Elia need not have lamented over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian reformation—your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its abuses—is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity. Scrips, wallets, bags, staves, dogs and crutches, the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... from the burning," "vessels of reprobation," destined, perhaps, by a due imitation of the "saints," to become some day "vessels of election," in the mean time to be unmercifully scourged by both master and mistress with the "besom of righteousness" probably, at the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... chum, "those good old days are gone by, now, and Israel worships strange gods. Old Nassau will never be what she was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,—swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. 'Fuit Ilium!' The old bell will never again ring out the gay 'larums of a 'Third Entry' barring-out. Homer's head no longer perches owl-like and wise over the central door-way. 'Ai, Adonai!' No more wilt proud fingers point ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... of cleaning the streets and the drainage was simple, natural, and unaided by art. A few years later, however, about 1824, a beginning was made towards an improved state of things, and a man was employed to sweep the streets periodically with a besom at the munificent salary of 36s. 4d. a year! Over the seventy years that have intervened, this pioneer of our town improvements stands out clear and notable with his four-penny besom and basket. That he did good honest work with his birch there is credible testimony in the parochial balance sheets ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... her to you, then," said the Becchino, sullenly, "such as two nights since she was committed to my charge. Line and lineament may already be swept away, for the Plague hath a rapid besom; but I have left that upon her by which you will know the Becchino is no liar. Bring hither the torches, comrades, and lift the door. Never stare; it's the gentleman's whim, and he'll ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and we who have the whip-hand of you will not listen to it. Be good enough to vanish. Permit yourself to be swept quietly into the dunghill. All that there was about you of value has departed from you; and allow me to say that you are now—rubbish." And then the ruthless besom comes with irresistible rush, and the rubbish is swept into the pit, there to be hidden for ever from the sight. And the pity of it is this—that a man, if he will only restrain his greed, may eat his cake and yet have it; aye, and in so doing will have twice more the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... descendants of the Greek emperors in the humble occupation of sailors and churchwardens, and vestrymen and road-trustees, there is nothing extravagant in the supposition, that we may have royal porters and scavengers on our streets, the sceptre having degenerated into the besom, and the truck taken the place of the chariot of state. The family of Nimrod may still exist, and retain their ancestral propensities in the craft of sportsmen and deer-stalkers, or in the lower grade of Jehus and jockeys. Who knows but the posterity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... cold, but I am warmer now," she cried. "And if Maid Betsy A'hannay comes to take me away, I want you to stretch out your hand like this, and say: 'Seneschal, remove that besom to the deep dungeon beneath the castle moat,' as we used to do in our plays before you became a great man. Then I could stay very long and talk to you all through the night, for Maud Lindesay sleeps so sound that nothing can ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... I; as doth a crew Before they give their broadside. By and by, My gentle countrymen, we will renew Our old acquaintance; and at least I'll try To tell you truths you will not take as true, Because they are so;—a male Mrs. Fry,[558] With a soft besom will I sweep your halls, And brush a web or two ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 20 occurred the battle of Chickamauga. Longstreet rushed into a breach in the Union line and swept it with a great big besom of wrath with which he had wisely provided himself on starting out. Rosecrans felt mortified when he came to himself and found that his horse had been so unmanageable that he had carried him ten miles from ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... have gude cause to remember her,' said Peter, 'for she turned a dyvour on my hands, the auld besom! and after a' that the law could do to make me satisfied and paid, in the way of poinding and distrenzieing and sae forth, as the law will, she ran awa to the charity workhouse, a matter of twenty punds Scots in my debt—it's a great shame and oppression that charity workhouse, taking in bankrupt ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Here's the besom of Reformation, Which should have made clean the floor; But it swept the wealth out of the nation, And left us dirt good store. Will you buy the state's spinning-wheel, Which spun for the roper's trade? But better it had stood still, For now it has spun a fair ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... oblivion have him whom the waters of God might not drown. Conquered lies unconquered Agamemnon; how else lies Julius Caesar? Nabuchodonosor, eater of grass, what is he? Kings pass, and their royal seat gathereth a little dust. Anon with a besom of feathers cometh. Time the chamberlain, and scareth to his hiding-place the lizard on the wall. Think soberly, O ye kings! how your crowns are but yellow metal, and your purple robes the food of moths, and the sceptres ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... a rattlesnake, And off his scaly skin to take, And through his head to drive a stake, And every bone within him break, And of his flesh mincemeat to make, To burn, to sear, to boil, and bake, Then in a heap the whole to rake, And over it the besom shake, And sink it fathoms in the lake— Whence after all, quite wide awake, Comes back that very same ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... week of March was marked by a furious snow-storm that swept the big prairie like a besom, but plugged up every coulee and ravine. For four days no communication had been held with the Ogallalla Agency. The wires were down, the road impassable, and Mrs. Davies had reached her new harbor of refuge none too soon. The quartermaster's ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... when I closed the door. I soon calmed down, therefore, into a state of tranquillity; from that into a drowsiness, and finally into a deep sleep; out of which I did not awake, until the housemaid, with her besom and her matin song, came to put the room in order. She stared at finding me stretched upon the sofa; but I presume circumstances of the kind were not uncommon after hunting dinners, in her master's bachelor establishment; for she went on with her song and her work, and took no farther ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of Naseby, that would sweep, With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than half The victory is attained, when one or two, Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn, Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn, Crucified Truth, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... by Western. One of the most striking scenes in the history of the Eastern Church is that which took place at the condemnation of Nikon, the great Patriarch of Moscow. Turning toward his judges, he pointed to a comet then blazing in the sky, and said, "God's besom shall sweep ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... foul effeminacies of the rotten Semitic peoples of the East, and even of Egypt itself, should be crushed, though alas! only for a while, by men who felt that they had a commission from the God of light and truth and purity, to sweep out all that with the besom ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... service to a small farmer and his wife, with whom, however, I did not stay long, for I was half starved, and otherwise ill-treated, especially by my mistress, who one day attempted to knock me down with a besom, I knocked her down with my fist, and went back ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... at last obeyed the spur, and he rode on and into the city, the gates of which were deserted. There he beheld on all sides that the Lord had indeed put the besom of destruction into the hands of the Reformers; and that not one of all the buildings which had been polluted by the papistry—no, not one—had escaped the erasing fierceness of its ruinous sweep. The presence of the magistrates lent the grace of authority to the zeal of the people, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... autumn 'twas,' and thus gave the lines true point and poetry. A third notable instance, somewhat more recondite, is found in 'Coriolanus' (II. i. 59-60) where Menenius asks the tribunes in the First Folio version 'what harm can your besom conspectuities [i.e. vision or eyes] glean out of this character?' Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet 'besom' by 'bisson' (i.e. purblind), a recognised Elizabethan word which Shakespeare had already employed in 'Hamlet' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee |
