"Osier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith's forge. Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking over at osier-beds! Among all the innumerable occupations that cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers-on, chair-mending may take a station in the first rank. When we sat down with our backs against the barn ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the hands of Love, soft, soft are his feet; you who have twined myrtle, have you brought crocuses, white as the inner stript bark of the osier, have you set black crocus against ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... wine, sweet wine, Will make Elysian shades not too fair, too divine. Soon was God Bacchus at meridian height; Flush'd were their cheeks, and bright eyes double bright: Garlands of every green, and every scent From vales deflower'd, or forest-trees branch-rent, In baskets of bright osier'd gold were brought High as the handles heap'd, to suit the thought Of every guest; that each, as he did please, Might fancy-fit his brows, silk-pillow'd ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... rod, master," said William. James was very busy stringing the fish through the gills upon a piece of osier. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... seen "On the deep bottom; gently crept the waves; "To creep scarce seeming; o'er the shelving banks "The stream-fed poplar, and the willow hoar, "A grateful shadow cast. The brink I reach'd "Dipp'd first my feet, then waded to my knee; "Not yet content, I loos'd my zone, and hung "Upon a bending osier my soft robe: "Then naked plung'd amid the stream; the waves "Beating, and sporting in a thousand shapes; "My arms around in every posture flung; "A strange unusual murmur seem'd to sound, "Deep from the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... on wrathful seas, Or often journeying landward; for in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... promise. That day precisely, I had made a tour of inspection with my son, Jacques. We started at about three o'clock. Our meadows on the banks of the Garonne were of a tender green. The grass was three feet high, and an osier thicket, planted the year before, had sprouts a yard high. From there we went to visit our wheat and our vines, fields bought one by one as fortune came to us. The wheat was growing strong; the vines, in full flower, promised a superb vintage. And Jacques laughed his good laugh as he slapped me ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... necessary for the magistrates to interfere to put a stop to the proceedings, by the capture of the ringleader of the party, from whose advice to his followers the most serious consequences were likely to ensue. At 12 o'clock, they assembled at a place called the Osier Bed, where every means were resorted to, to quell the disturbance, but without success. Sir William defied interruption to his men, and fired on the Rev. William Handley, of Herne Hill, who, with his brother, was assisting to take him into custody. They then ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... became more and more serious. Should the raft be stopped, not only would the fugitives not reach Irkutsk, but they would be obliged to leave their floating platform, for it would be very soon smashed to pieces in the ice. The osier ropes would break, the fir trunks torn asunder would drift under the hard crust, and the unhappy people would have no refuge but the ice blocks themselves. Then, when day came, they would be seen by the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... worshipped the God of the thunder-storm, not the God of peace; and it was amidst the thunder-storm that their horrid rites appeared most horrid. When, illuminated by the lurid glare of the lightning, the gigantic osier figure filled with human beings sank into the flames—when the shouts of the multitude who stood in a dense circle around the spot, the frenzied chants of the druids, and the despairing shrieks of the dying victims, were drowned in the sullen roar of the thunder—then must the fearful nature ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... inhabited by two distinct bands. The whole extended about three quarters of a mile along the river bank, and was composed of conical lodges, that looked like so many small hillocks, being wooden frames intertwined with osier, and covered with earth. The plain beyond the village swept up into hills of considerable height, but the whole country was nearly destitute ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... that one drop (a purely homoeopathic remedy, the section would observe), placed upon his tongue, after death, would restore him. What was the obvious inference? That Thorn, who was marching and countermarching in osier beds, and other swampy places, was impressed with a presentiment that he should be drowned; in which case, had his instructions been complied with, he could not fail to have been brought to life again instantly by his own prescription. As it was, if this woman, or any other person, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... effort, and accepted the Vice-Prefect's son's invitation to see the oil-making at a villa of theirs near the coast. The villa, or farm, is an old fortified, towered place, standing on a hillside among olive-trees and little osier-bushes, which look like a bright orange flame. The olives are squeezed in a tremendous black cellar, like a prison: you see, by the faint white daylight, and the smoky yellow flare of resin burning in pans, great white bullocks ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... beds of rushes; and Goldilocks, soothed by the lullaby, fell asleep; but soon awoke, and saw her brother leaning, on tiptoe, over the osier basket. The baby's face looked, in the moonlight, white and pinched; and its sick hands were pressed together ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... rapidly alongside the raft sweeping the frothing water from under her paddle wheels. The planks tossed up and down in the wash, and the osier branches fastening them together, groaned and scraped with ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... say if he knew we had made a domiciliary visit without getting any results?" remarked Peyrade as he helped Corentin into the osier vehicle. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... writing on Nov. 4, 1767, after mentioning that he had seen swallows roosting in osier-beds by the river, says:—'This seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.' White's Selborne, Letter xii. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... themselves, at ease, as his limbs in a bath. He felt himself so powerless against her, that he never essayed to struggle. She possessed him. Once or twice he attempted to firmly oppose her ruinous caprices; but she had made him pliable as the osier. Under the dark glances of this girl, his strongest resolutions melted more quickly than snow beneath an April sun. She tortured him; but she had also the power to make him forget all by a smile, a tear, or a kiss. Away from the enchantress, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... swoln face before her stand, And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak: "Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue, At dawn or dusk, industrious as before; Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew, 135 While I lie weltering on the osier'd shore, Drown'd by the Kelpie's[47] wrath, nor ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... the osier grove! Wake, trembling, stainless, virgin dove! Wake, nestling of a parent's love! Let Moran see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... the edge of the marsh and halted for a moment. In front of us lay a dark pool, still as death and fringed with long grass and osier beds. A mournful breeze blew across the place, raising a (p. 134) plaintive croon, half of resignation and half of protest from the osiers and grasses as it passed. A little distance away the skeleton of a house stood up naked against ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... shocking: Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the level of her face, an open basket of wicker. It was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms. At the sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent. Then, at a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... shapely stone, By foliaged tracery combined; Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand, Twixt poplars straight, the osier wand, In many a freakish knot, had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... baguette D'osier vert ou de romarin Il fait un piege, et puis il guette Les petits oiseaux en goguette Qui viennent ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... in front of me and taking the lead; and we all filed after him through the open forest, moving rapidly, almost on a run, for half a mile, then swung sharply out to the right, where the trees grew slimmer and thinner, and plunged into a thicket of hazel and osier. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... affecting in these prompt and spontaneous offerings of Nature than in the most costly monuments of art; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and the tear falls on the grave as affection is binding the osier round the sod; but pathos expires under the slow labor of the chisel, and is chilled among the cold conceits ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... together the rams, three and three with osier twigs, and instructed my comrades, as he drove them out, to cling under the middle one. I hid myself under the fleecy belly of a huge ram, the finest of the flock. He touched their backs as he drove them out, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... counsels framed, as one Who strove for life, conscious of woe at hand. To me, thus meditating, this appear'd The likeliest course. The rams well-thriven were, 500 Thick-fleeced, full-sized, with wool of sable hue. These, silently, with osier twigs on which The Cyclops, hideous monster, slept, I bound, Three in one leash; the intermediate rams Bore each a man, whom the exterior two Preserved, concealing him on either side. Thus each was borne by three, and I, at last, The curl'd back seizing of a ram, (for one I had reserv'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... then, alas! the fresh cheese that he devoured, osier baskets and all! Ten, when I asked for my money, he started to roar and shoot terrible ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... The trappers and Indians made Kil-i-ki-nic, or Kinnikinick, by mixing tobacco with the inside bark of red willow, which is the common name for the red osier ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... "I was up so early, while you were all in bed, finding May-roses for you, with the May-dew on them. And if your father and mother will let us go, I'll take you up the river to the osier island; or you shall ride my Ruby, and we'll go off a long, long way into the country, us three, and have dinner in a new place, where you have never been. Because ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... observing that the fish would no longer rise, he wound up his line, and again took to his oars. They soon reached the shore. Norman begged that he might be allowed to carry the fish, which the laird had strung through the gills with a piece of osier which he cut from ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... covering of adobe mortar is placed upon them, forming the roof terrace in front, and the floor of the apartments above in the receding second story. Water-jars of their own manufacture, of fine workmanship, and holding several gallons, closely woven osier baskets of their own make, and blankets of cotton and wool, woven by their own hand-looms, are among the objects seen in these apartments. They are neatly kept, roomy and comfortable, and differ in no respect from those in use at the period of the conquest, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... majority of the field, having effected the descent of the hills, were now trotting on in the valley below, sufficiently near, however, to allow our hill party full view of their proceedings. After drawing a couple of osier-beds blank, they assumed a line parallel to the hills, and moved on to a wood of about ten acres, the west end of which terminated in a natural gorse. "They'll find there to a certainty," said Mr. Jorrocks, pulling a telescope out of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... from all states of society, and I have seen them die of general paralysis. Five per cent. of the people who get syphilis, in spite of treatment, develop this disease. That is only one aspect of it. I was on the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease, and Sir William Osier, who was a great authority, said that he could teach medicine on syphilis alone, because every tissue in the body is affected by it, and that the diseases of blindness, deafness, insanity and every form of disease may be due to syphilis. You have only to consider ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... off their black-and-white blankets, and each in turn planted branches of yellow willow, green willow, red osier, samphire, witch-hazel, spice-bush, and silver birch along the edge of the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... in the grease-laden atmosphere of the cavern, Kraken plaited a deformed skeleton out of osier rods and covered it with bristling, scaly, and filthy skins. To one extremity of the skeleton Orberosia sewed the fierce crest and the hideous mask that Kraken used to wear in his plundering expeditions, and to the other end she fastened the tail with twisted ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... large quantity of relics, which are also fully described, consisting of stone implements, pottery, cotton and feather cloth, osier and palmillo mats, yucca sandals, weaving sticks, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... habits, Carabi,[1] Cetoniae, Buprestes, Chrysomelae,[2] rival and even surpass the magnificent Dung-beetles in the matter of jewellery. At times we encounter splendours which the imagination of a lapidary would not venture to depict. The Azure Hoplia,[3] the inmate of the osier-beds and elders by the banks of the mountain streams, is a wonderful blue, tenderer and softer to the eye than the azure of the heavens. You could not find an ornament to match it save on the throats of certain Humming-birds and the wings of a ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... taken by Thenardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight was impossible. Had Thenardier, spurred on by that thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and intelligence into genius, had Thenardier invented a third mode? No ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... rust. For fastening the gunwales to the crossboards use nails instead of screws, because the nails are not apt to loosen and come out. The ribs, which are easily made of long, slender switches of osier willow, or similar material, are next put in, but before doing this, two strips of wood (b, b, Fig. 3) should be bent and placed as in Fig. 3. They are used only temporarily as a guide in putting in the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... and even from that distance so evidently sickly, that they looked like orphan fruit-trees that were being brought up in a Poor Law orchard. Among them stood two or three raw-boned bungalows painted those colours which are liked by plumbers. But the floor of the valley was an osier-bed, and the burst of sunshine had set alight the coarse orange hair of the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... I, there's enow To fill life's dusty way; And who will miss a poet's feet, Or wonder where he stray: So to the woods and wastes I'll go, And I will build an osier bower, And sweetly there to me shall flow The ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... call'd ev, with a different caracter, is no less absur'd than j consonant, not call'd ij, with a different figure, as mejer for measure, as the French also use it, as je vou remercy. So osier, [h]osier, easier, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... this! Tear up that board! So! Now, place it thus across the bows. Hack off that sapling end! Now that dry twist of osier! Never mind the boat, man; we can afford to leave her now. Tear off that outer strip of hide. See, the wood beneath is ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... night, doing in all things the bidding of the Queen wherein if Kalliope fail by one hair's breadth of perfect service, I, Stephanos the elder, her grandsire, will beat her with pliant rods fresh cut from the osier trees until the blood of full atonement flows ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... grapes, apricots—all the fruits—do well on this soil. With us I think the pear would not do well on peat; but here it withstood last year's flood, which broke a levee and overflowed Mr. Bigelow's farm, and the trees do not appear to have suffered. He had also wind-breaks of osier willow, which of course grows rapidly, and had been a source of profit to him in, yielding ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... wheels smoothly rotating. So clear'd softly between and tooth-nipt even it ever 315 Onward moved; still clung on wan lips, sodden as ashes, Shreds all woolly from out that soft smooth surface arisen. Lastly before their feet lay fells, white, fleecy, refulgent, Warily guarded they in baskets woven of osier. They, as on each light tuft their voice smote louder approaching, 320 Pour'd grave inspiration, a prophet chant to the future, Chant which an after-time shall tax ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back; He bridled her mouth with a silk-weed twist; He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now through evening's dewy mist, With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... need be no harm to make just one, now you've spoken of it," said Theodora. So the knife being opened, I was instructed how to cut a stick of green osier, or maple, shape the end, cut and loosen the bark; and having slipped the bark off, how further to make the requisite notches, so that the hollow cylinder of bark being replaced, there would be a whistle ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... shrill pipe came back as the kingfisher hastened away. By the huge boulder of sarsen, whose shoulder projected but a few inches—in stormy times a dangerous rock to mariners—and then into the unknown narrow seas between the endless osier-beds and withy-covered isles. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... yelled, and flung them aside like children, but made no attempt at escape, for, in truth, he knew not what he did. The sheriff, one of the most powerful and athletic men to be found in the province, was turned about and bent like an osier in his hands. His words, when the fury of despair permitted his wild and broken cries to become intelligible, were now for life—only life upon any terms; and again did he howl out his horrors of death, hell, and judgment. Never was such ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hunk in the sheds—good mattresses and thick blankets, Phil, nothing to complain of at all—I'll be watching her growing up, year by year, same as if she was under my eye constant. 'She's in pinafores now' thinks I. 'Now she's in long frocks, and is doing up her hair.' 'She's as straight as an osier now, and red as a rose, and the best looking girl in the island, and the spitting picture of what her mother used to be.' Aw, I'll be seeing her in my mind's eye, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... basket-makers, and they did not succeed badly in this new manufacture. At the point of the lake which projected to the north, they had discovered an osier-bed in which grew a large number of purple osiers. Before the rainy season, Pencroft and Herbert had cut down these useful shrubs, and their branches, well prepared, could now be effectively employed. The first attempts were somewhat crude, but ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... heavily festooned with feathery snow. Those long creeping lines on which the crystals sparkle are only brambles, and that big rosette of rusty red and fluffy white is the New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost particles, is the downy viburnum. The great tangle of vine ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the river, the banks are thickly shaded with groves of dates, displacing, it should seem, the other species of trees, from which Isaiah names this scene "the Brook or Valley of Willows," although the humble races of that graceful tribe, in the osier, &c. are yet the prolific offspring ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... themselves, and are hollowed out for the reception of a rod provided at its extremities with a winged nut and jam nut for passing them up close to one another. The plates, properly so called, are held apart by rubber bauds. The glass vessels are placed in osier baskets.—La Lumiere Electrique. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... one on board but the barge-master, and he was at the other end of the vessel, smoking and minding his rudder. The driver was walking on the towing-path by the old grey horse. The motion of the boat was so smooth that we seemed to be lying still whilst villages and orchards and green banks and osier-beds went slowly by, as though the world were coming to show itself to us, instead of our going out to see ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... friend must be more than apparent to any one. They had reached the edge of the ice now, and Sylvia's hands were still in Jerry's, although they were not skating, but stood facing each other. A bush of osier, frozen into the ice, lifted its red twigs near them. Sylvia looked down at it, hesitating how to express her utter denial of any liking for the hilarious young man. Jerry misunderstood her pause and cried out: "Good God! Sylvia! ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... are split, you can look on the ground; you will surely find osier withes to make arcelets [little strips of iron in the shape of bows, with which shoes ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... times, and not in a dream of the Arabian Nights; while the Paris Figaro and the London Times—both of that day's issue—lying on a side-table, demonstrated the nineteenth century to me with every possible clearness. There were flowers everywhere in this apartment—in graceful vases and in gilded osier baskets—and a queer lop-sided Oriental jar stood quite near me, filled almost to overflowing with Neapolitan violets. Yet it was winter in Paris, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... stature, of a common man: [97] his chest ample, his shoulders broad, his limbs strong and muscular, his hair curled, his aspect commanding. Without his bow, or quiver, or club, his lion's skin carelessly thrown over him, he was seated on an osier basket, his right leg and arm stretched to the utmost, his left knee bent, and supporting his elbow, his head reclining on his left hand, his countenance indignant and pensive. 11. A colossal statue of Juno, which had once adorned her ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Taking the two little osier baskets, laden with yellow and purple clusters, Casimer offered them, with a charming mixture of timidity and grace, to the girls, saying, like a ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... these, seated apart somewhat from the others, were the stately and still beautiful Hortensia, and her lovely daughter, both of them employed in twirling the soft threads from the merrily revolving spindle, into large osier baskets; and the elder lady, glancing at times toward the knot of slave girls, as if to see that they performed their light tasks; and at times, if their mirth waxed too loud, checking it by a ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... (postal) posxtmandato, (decoration) ordeno. ore : minajxo, mineralo, metalo. organ : organo, -ilo; (music) orgeno. organic : organika. organise : organizi. origin : deveno, origino. original : original'a, -o. ornament : ornamo; garnituro. orphan : orf'o, -ino. oscillate : balancigxi, pendoli. osier : salikajxo. ostentation : fanfaronade, parado. ostrich : struto. other : alia, cetera. ought : devus. ounce : unco. outlaw : proskripcii. outlay : elspezo. outlet : defluejo, elirejo. outline : konturo, skizo. outrage : perfort'ajxo, -i. oval : ovalo, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... vernal flow'rs, And hearing, as I lay at ease along, Your swains contending for the prize of song! I also dared attempt (and, as it seems Not much displeas'd attempting) various themes, For even I can presents boast from you, The shepherd's pipe and osier basket too, And Dati and Francini both have made My name familiar to the beechen shade, 190 And they are learn'd, and each in ev'ry place Renown'd for song, and both of Lydian Race. Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all now due to ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... was done I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great length every way, as full with stakes or sticks of the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... distance toward the sky, come down again, scarcely so much from a doubt of their merits, as through affection to their native land. In summer they hang like a permanent shower of green to refresh the bright water; and in winter, like loose osier-work, or ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of which no record remained. The soft hand of nature had filled up the gaps and seams with creeping plants and bushes, and all deformities were hidden by her magic touch. Around the sides of the amphitheatre were twenty to thirty low huts of osier work, twined around tall posts driven into the ground and cunningly daubed with stiff clay. In the centre of the glade was a great fire, evidently common property, for a huge caldron steamed and bubbled ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... like, I now visualize as filling up with the kind of growth which lines our roads, and which is no less beautiful and much more fitting. From my own woods will come in spring (the only safe time to move them) masses of mountain laurel and azalea. From my own pasture fence-line will come red osier, dogwood, with its white blooms, its blue berries, its winter stem-coloring, and elderberry. From my own woods have already come several four-foot maple-leaved vibernums, which, though moved in June, throve and have made a fine new growth. There will be, also, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... mouth, which he made me wear by day and took off at night. I was amazed at his intrepidity and headlong valour. He dashed in and out between the six swords of the ruffians, and made as light of them as if they were so many osier wands. It was wonderful to behold the agility with which he assaulted, his thrusts and parries, and with what judgment and quickness of eye he prevented his enemies from attacking him from behind. In short, in my opinion and that of all the spectators of the fight, he was a very Rhodomont, having ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... slept, shimmered golden as a buttercup held under the pearly chin of a child. This was only Marseilles, but already the smell of the south was in the air, the scent of warm salt sea, of eucalyptus logs burning, and pine trees and invisible orange groves. On the platform, osier baskets packed full of flowers sent out wafts of perfume; and as Mary stood gazing over the heads of the crowd at the lightening sky, she thought the dawn rushed up the east like a torchbearer, bringing good news. Just for a moment she forgot everybody, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... journey; 2d, the residence; and 3d, the return; will form the most proper and perspicuous division. 1. I climbed Mount Cenis, and descended into the plain of Piedmont, not on the back of an elephant, but on a light osier seat, in the hands of the dextrous and intrepid chairmen of the Alps. The architecture and government of Turin presented the same aspect of tame and tiresome uniformity: but the court was regulated with decent and splendid oeconomy; and I was introduced to his Sardinian majesty Charles Emanuel, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... provision, apparatus. avisado sagacious. avisar to inform, notify. ay alas! ayer yesterday. ayuda aid, help. ayudar to aid. ayuno fast, abstinence. ayuntamiento town council. azafate m. flat (osier) basket. azotea platform on roof. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Ralph was a great amateur in fowls and eggs. No sooner did a hen cackle, but he resorted to the nest, and, with his lead-pencil, wrote the day of the month upon the egg. The lady rung her table-bell, and called him to her, telling him to bring his egg-basket. He brought in an openwork, red osier basket, with a dozen and a half of eggs in it, laid on cotton batting, each egg as duly inscribed as the specimens of a mineralogist. Ralph was ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... succeeded so well with the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be caught by that palpable device. But casting about in his mind all the ways which he could contrive for escape (no less than all their lives depending on the success), at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots of the osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly slept; with which he tied the fattest and fleeciest of the rams together, three in a rank, and under the belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last, wrapping himself fast with ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... ever- lastingly-green garden, needing no matter-of-fact identification here; and then the tide obligingly turned—being devoted to that party alone for that day; and as they floated idly among some osier-beds, Rosa tried what she could do in the rowing way, and came off splendidly, being much assisted; and Mr. Grewgious tried what he could do, and came off on his back, doubled up with an oar under his chin, being not assisted at all. Then there was an interval of rest under ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... fluttered a little, but it was rather in fear of her aunt's displeasure than of any mischance likely to happen to herself. She had been often to these osier beds, and had never encountered a living soul there, and she would soon reach the region of walls and gardens that adjoined the southern end of the bridge. So taking her basket on her arm, she pushed her way upwards from the river to the path along which lay ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... lances which garlands had bound. * * * * * The moon on the east oriel shone, Through slender shafts of shapely stone, By foliated tracery combined; Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand In many a freakish knot had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow-wreaths ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... great plenty of them about Bemarton, &c. near Salisbury, where the osier beds doe yield ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... bank, Where grows the willow and the osier dank, My sliding chariot stays, Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen Of turkis blue, and emerald green, That in the channel strays; Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O'er the cowslip's velvet ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... bubbling forth among the first trees we had seen since we left the Laramie. Then we descended into a fine shady valley: all our old friends were there in thickets—the box-elder, willow, birch and cottonwood, the alder, osier and wild cherry, currant, gooseberry, buffalo-berry and clematis. As we went on, brushing through the thick foliage, the hills on either side became higher, and grew into bastions, castles, donjon-keeps and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Uhlans occupied the Commune, and houses and haystacks were burned.... At LOMME every one was forced to work: the Saxon Kdnt. Schoper announced that all women who did not obey within 24 hours would be interned: all the women obeyed. They were employed in the making of osier-revetement two metres high for the trenches. The men were forced to put up barbed wire near Fort Denglas, two kltrs. from the front. A few days after the evacuation of ENNETIERES the Uhlans shot a youth, Jean Leclercq, age 17, son of the gardener of Count D'Hespel, simply because they had found ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... work on savage manners, compared with the manners of heathen antiquity. Lafitau, who was greatly struck with the resemblances between Greek and Iroquois or Carib initiations, takes Servius's other explanation of the mystica vannus, 'an osier vessel containing rural offerings of first fruits.' This exactly answers, says Lafitau, to the Carib Matoutou, on which they offer ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... lilac in bloomy thickets; the ox-eyed daisy of Whitsuntide; the yellow rose of St. Brelade that lies down in the sand and stands up in the hedges; the "mergots" which, like good soldiers, are first in the field and last out of it; the unscented dog-violets, orchises and celandines; the osier beds, the ivy on every barn; the purple thrift in masses on the cliff; the sea-thistle in its glaucous green—"the laughter of the fields whose laugh was gold." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on the river Thames and the Cam are well known. They are small islands planted entirely with willows, and are called osier-holts. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... process of making or cut osiers lying handy for use. The women split and peel the green rods, men and children with nimble fingers plait the white canes. All the basket-makers are themselves plaited into one co-operative association. From time immemorial Villaines had made baskets, the osier of the valley being of excellent quality. But the products could not be disposed of satisfactorily; they were bought by regraders, who beat down the prices of the wares, and the workmen had no means of seeking out the markets, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of willow for osier-work is pursued to some extent in this country, and might be greatly increased. At one fourth the present prices, it would pay as well as any other branch of agriculture. Some varieties will grow on land of little value for other purposes, and ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... a while, and thinks in haste; Then, desp'rate in distress, resolves at last. A knotty lance of well-boil'd oak he bore; The middle part with cork he cover'd o'er: He clos'd the child within the hollow space; With twigs of bending osier bound the case; Then pois'd the spear, heavy with human weight, And thus invok'd my favor for the freight: 'Accept, great goddess of the woods,' he said, 'Sent by her sire, this dedicated maid! Thro' air she flies a suppliant to ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... of one inch and a half in length was made in the stem of a lilac tree, the branch being about an inch in diameter. The slit extended to the pith. Fifteen or twenty grains of moistened arsenic were introduced, the cut was closed, and the stem retained in its original position by osier ties. On the 8th, the leaves began to roll up at the extremity; on the 28th, the branches were dry, and, in the second week of July, the whole of the stem was dry, and the tree itself dead. In about fifteen days after the first, a tree, which joined the former a little above the earth, shared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... quite white and there are strange, deep lines on his forehead, and marked parentheses round his mouth which can be but the foot-prints of pain and thought. He could not see us in our secluded shelter and I could not make my mouth utter his name—he who had wrung my heart as a peasant twists an osier withe. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... my teeth with rage, I made desperate efforts to resist. Patience, with hideous calmness, bound me to a tree with an osier shoot. At the touch of his great horny hand I bent like a reed; and yet I was remarkably strong for my age. He fixed the owl to a branch above my head, and the bird's blood, as it fell on me drop by drop, caused me unspeakable horror; for though this ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... eastern clouds with streaks of light; And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels: Non, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb; What is her burying gave, that is her womb: And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find; Many for many virtues excellent, ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... usually a hurdle; . . . the original sense is something twined or woven together; hence it came to mean a hurdle, woven with twigs; Anglo-Saxon, watel, a hurdle." (Skeat.) In England the supple twigs of the osier-willow are used for making such hurdles. The early colonists found the long pliant boughs and shoots of the indigenous Acacias a ready substitute for the purpose, and they used them for constructing the partitions and outer-walls of the early houses, by forming ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... whole country-side, did not know this miracle of beauty. The child, who was half naked, wore a forlorn little petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in alternate strips of brown and white, full of holes and very ragged. A sheet of rough writing paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her for a hat. Beneath this paper—covered with pot-hooks and round O's, from which it derived the name of "schoolpaper"—the loveliest mass of blonde hair that ever a daughter of Eve could have desired, was twisted up, and held in place by a species of comb ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... so too, and grew the warmer at being unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was fain to let her rise up and go. I never saw men ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... meal over, a ride was in order; first around the Fort among the men—Captain Wayne, Osier Mike, Scout Al Rennie—then out over the sagebrush flat. "Here's the old battle ground of the horses; here's where you chased the coyote, and here's where Blazing Star took you over the single stringer bridge on that black night." It was less than a year he had been away, and yet ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... stately-sailing swan Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale; And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Rears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle, Protective of his young. The Seasons: Spring. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... comment Torquemada s'y prend Pour dissiper la nuit du sauvage ignorant, Comment il civilise, et de quelle maniere Le saint office enseigne et fait de la lumiere; Quand j'ai vu dans Lima d'affreux geants d'osier, Pleins d'enfants, petiller sur un large brasier, Et le feu devorer la vie, et les fumees Se tordre sur les seins des femmes allumees; Quand je me suis senti parfois presque etouffe Par l'acre odeur qui sort de votre auto-da-fe, Moi qui ne brulais ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... and the streams of Babylon, where the Hebrews remembered Zion so mournfully, Sir Robert Ker Porter states, that 'the banks of the Euphrates were hoary with reeds, and the grey osier willows were yet there on which the captives of Israel hung their harps,' and wept in the land of the stranger. The salix babylonica, or the weeping willow, in its geographical range, sweeps through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... shot, when I had food enough in the hut—only wandered about in my freedom, and let the time pass. Whichever way I turned, there was always just as much to see and hear—all things changing a little every day. Even the osier thickets and the juniper stood waiting for the spring. One day I went out to the mill; it was still icebound, but the earth around it had been trampled through many and many a year, showing how men and more men had ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk-like man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier-woven wings, of Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May. The trees planted ten years earlier on the banks—weeping willows, osier, alder, ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature and the lay of the land made suitable—held amid their foliage a few fleecy vapors, born of the waters, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... thus, with lips all ashen, He prayed—till back, with ghastlier rage and roar, The demon rout rushed, strung to fiercer passion, And crashed his osier door. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Coffee-tree White racemes River-banks, rich soil; N. Y., Pa., West. Collinsia Blue and white Moist soil; N. Y., Pa., West. Common elder Flowers white, berries black Banks, rich soil. Common. Cornel, panicled Flowers and berries white Thickets and river-banks. Cornel, red osier Whitish, berries white Damp New England pastures. Cornel, silky White, berries pale blue Wet places. Common. Cow-lily Bright yellow Still waters. Very common. Cranberry-tree Wh., red berries Low, damp grounds; N. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... half a mile, across a reedy swamp. Every now and then they had to jump across a small dyke, and once they had to make a detour to avoid an osier bed. They came at last to ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brink before I guessed, and I came close upon taking a bath at unawares. Now this stream, so handy within reach, was just what I wanted, and among the bushes by the verge grew a plant—much like our English osier, but dwarfer—extremely pliant and tougher than the tendrils of the clematis; so, that, having stripped it of half a dozen twigs, I went back to work ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... sweeping she carefully sorted the scraps, and put them into boxes under the counter; then she neatly rolled up the brown-paper curtains, which had been let down to exclude the afternoon sun; shook the old patchwork cushions in the osier-bottomed chairs; watered the rose-geranium and the monthly rose, which flourished wonderfully in that fluffy atmosphere; set every pin and needle in its place, and shut the door, which was opened again at sunrise. Of late years, Grand'ther's occupation had declined. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... thou not rather do something which is required, and make osier and reed basket."—Virgil, Eclog., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... flowing, rich and full, crested with foam beneath the osier hedges. We hear it break with a sudden dash and splutter against the cliff parapets. And the mud-bank ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 16, 1896, after a period of very stormy wet weather, I saw a great migration of swallows down the Thames. It was a dark, dripping evening, and the thick osier bed on Chiswick Eyot was covered with wet leaf. Between five and six o'clock immense flights of swallows and martins suddenly appeared above the eyot, arriving, not in hundreds, but in thousands and ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... intelligence in the landlord operates far less injuriously in the case of pasture-land than in the highly-developed culture of the vine and olive. On an arable estate, according to Cato, the returns of the soil stood as follows in a descending series:—1, vineyard; 2, vegetable garden; 3, osier copse, which yielded a large return in consequence of the culture of the vine; 4, olive plantation; 5, meadow yielding hay; 6, corn fields; 7, copse; 8, wood for felling; 9, oak forest for forage to the cattle; all of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was done, I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great length every way, as full with stakes, or sticks, of the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch, that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might have no shelter from the young ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... here a very beautiful expanse of clear chalk water like a long wandering shallow lake. Through this shallow lake the river runs in half a dozen channels, which are parted and thwarted in many places by marsh, reed-beds, osier plots, and tracts of swampy woodland. There is nothing quite like it in England. The river-bed is pretty generally between five ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... craggy. Craik, the corn-crake, the land-rail. Crambo-clink, rhyme. Crambo-jingle, rhyming. Cran, the support for a pot or kettle. Crankous, fretful. Cranks, creakings. Cranreuch, hoar-frost. Crap, crop, top. Craw, crow. Creel, an osier basket. Creepie-chair, stool of repentance. Creeshie, greasy. Crocks, old ewes. Cronie, intimate friend. Crooded, cooed. Croods, coos. Croon, moan, low. Croon, to toll. Crooning, humming. Croose, crouse, cocksure, set, proud, cheerful. Crouchie, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... day; she brought augers for boring and he made the beams fast. He built a raft, making it very broad, and set a mast upon it and fixed a rudder to guide it. To make it more secure, he wove out of osier rods a fence that went from stem to stern as a bulwark against the waves, and he strengthened the bulwark with wood placed behind. Calypso wove him a web of cloth for sails, and these he made very skilfully. Then he fastened the braces and the halyards and sheets, ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... Spring? The hardy bunting does not chide; The blackbirds make the maples ring With social cheer and jubilee; The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee, The robins know the melting snow; The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed, Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves, Secure the osier yet will hide Her callow brood in mantling leaves,— And thou, by science all undone, Why only must thy reason fail To see ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that wild fellow, the big one, broke my pot yesterday, whilst he was scrambling with Philip for what remained of the contents." I inquired for the eldest; and she had scarcely time to tell me that he was driving a couple of geese home from the meadow, when he ran up, and handed Philip an osier-twig. I talked a little longer with the woman, and found that she was the daughter of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was gone on a journey into Switzerland for some money a relation had left him. "They wanted to cheat ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... fenced round by a shrub called el lechero, or milk-tree, which derives its name from a white liquid oozing out of it when a branch is broken off. This liquid, however, is sharp and caustic. The sticks, about six feet in height, throw out young shoots like the osier, and when pruned become very thick, and form an excellent fence. Within the enclosure were growing patches of wheat, potatoes, and Indian corn, as also the yuca root, from the flour of which palatable cakes are formed. This mountain plantation was cultivated, the old man told us, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... lessen. Few of the people could read, and fewer still could write. They knew nothing but what their priests and politicians told them to believe. They went to their beds with the poultry, and rose as the cock crew: they went to mass, as their ducks to the osier and weed ponds; and to the conscription as their lambs to the slaughter. They understood that there was a world beyond them, but they remembered it only as the best market for their fruit, their fowls, their lace, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... could no longer do otherwise; then he would hurriedly plait a dozen baskets and go and sell them in the market. As long as the money lasted he lounged about, visiting all the taverns and digesting his drink in the sunshine. Then, when he had fasted a whole day, he would once more take up his osier with a low growl and revile the wealthy who lived in idleness. The trade of a basket-maker, when followed in such a manner, is a thankless one. Antoine's work would not have sufficed to pay for his drinking bouts if he had not contrived a means of procuring his osier at low cost. He never bought ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon track goes up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... converged upon it at the sound of the music, as flies flock to the osier blossom. They went in, as the blessed to Paradise. The canvas began to sway and billow in the wind of the dancing. Hazel felt that life was going on gaily without her—she shut away in the dark. Her feet ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great length every way, as full with stakes or sticks of the osier- like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might have no shelter from the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... order to obtain the different proportions are based upon the length of the stick, A'A, employed. Such length being found, we divide it by ten, and thus obtain what is called the unit of length. With such unit it is very easy to obtain all the proportions. The bow, K'K, consists of two pieces of osier each 51/2 units in length, that form, through their union, a total length of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... patrol. In front of Essarts the lines were so far apart that there was plenty of room for a small pitched battle, and night after night Lieuts. Pearson, Creed, Poynor, and others visited such familiar haunts as the "Osier Bed," "Thistle Patch," "Lonely Tree," and other well-known places. The first to meet the enemy was Lieut. Pearson, who came upon a small party in the "Thistle Patch," who made off rapidly back ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... standing out on a marsh eating raspberries. When he glanced up, a big black bear stood beside him. Robber Father broke off an osier twig and struck the bear on the nose. "Keep to your own ground, you!" he said; "this is my turf." Then the huge bear turned around and ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... nature. All laborers must have their nooning, and at this season of the day, we are all, more or less, Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. While lying thus on our oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the day, our boat held by an osier put through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons, which are a fruit of the East, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of contemplation and dwelling-places of the ruminant nations. In the experience of this noontide ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... saw the swallows gathering in the sky, And in the osier-isle we heard them noise. We had not to look back on summer joys, Or forward to a summer of bright dye: But in the largeness of the evening earth Our spirits grew as we went side by side. The hour became her husband and my bride. Love, that had robbed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... long and very dusty to-day: it is never an interesting way out of Aubette, except that being cut on the hillside it is raised high, the little river meandering through the osier meadows on the left, and also commands a fine view of the beautiful old church. But Marie does not turn back to look at the church: her heart is too heavy to take interest in anything out of herself. She has left the cart behind to bring out crockery and some new chairs which she has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... thing will be laughing in its light. The great trees will have grown strong in it, the flowers will have brightened, and the river there, Leone, will be running so deep and clear, kissing the green banks and the osier beds, carrying with it the leaves and flowers that will fall on its bosom, and the garden will be filled with the flowers we love the best. You see ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... Narcissus-like, the sun too pines. Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge My temples here in heavy sedge; Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide; Or, to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermining root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at my lines the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... one) of all the otters, and the number captured and killed in the last few years was mentioned. "Good otter-hounds," as an old writer observes, "will come chanting, and trail along by the river-side, and will beat every tree-root, every osier-bed, and tuft of bulrushes; nay, sometimes they will take the water and beat it like a spaniel, and by these means the otter can hardly escape you." The otter swims and dives with great celerity, and in doing the latter it throws up sprots, or air-bubbles, which ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... a mile of open water, and the maidens started off with a large supply of dried flesh slung in osier baskets on their backs. Some of the young braves looked after them as they went and disputed as to which of them they would like to choose as squaw ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... springs; such, too, is Siena when you get there, but redder, her grey stones blushing for her sins. And the country blushes for her as you draw near, for all the vineyards are dotted with burning willows in the autumn—osier-bushes flaming at the heart. Let it be night when you arrive—the dead vast and middle of a still night. Then suffer yourself to be whirled through the inky streets, over the flags, from one hill to another. It is deathly ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... rusty or otherwise, that lay there unnoticed and unappropriated. Each can was furnished with four or five large pebbles inside, and was secured at the end with brown paper if the original lid was lost. They were packed in osier-plaited baskets, and hidden away in a corner of the barn until ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... higher ground lay St. Amand, with its outlying hamlets. All was bathed in the shimmering, sultry heat of midsummer, the harbinger, as it proved, of a violent thunderstorm. The Prussian position was really stronger than it seemed. Napoleon could not fully see either the osier beds that fringed the Ligny brook, or its steep banks, or the many strong buildings of Ligny itself. He saw the Prussians on the slope behind the village, and was at first puzzled by their exposed position. "The old fox keeps to earth," he was heard ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... buzzing sound, the same as that of s flat; as in Zeno, zenith, breeze, dizzy. Before u primal or i feeble, z, as well as s flat, sometimes takes the sound of zh, which, in the enumeration of consonantal sounds, is reckoned a distinct element; as in azure, seizure, glazier; osier, measure, pleasure. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was her voice that he forgot his nets and his cunning, and had no care of his craft. Vermilion-finned and with eyes of bossy gold, the tunnies went by in shoals, but he heeded them not. His spear lay by his side unused, and his baskets of plaited osier were empty. With lips parted, and eyes dim with wonder, he sat idle in his boat and listened, listening till the sea-mists crept round him, and the wandering moon stained his brown ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... penetrating showers, Or fierce sun's ravening might, or searching blast Of the keen north should sear them. Well, I wot, He serves the fields who with his harrow breaks The sluggish clods, and hurdles osier-twined Hales o'er them; from the far Olympian height Him golden Ceres not in vain regards; And he, who having ploughed the fallow plain And heaved its furrowy ridges, turns once more Cross-wise his shattering share, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... was necessary, and Bob softly let himself down from the bank till his feet were level with the water, then taking hold of a stout osier above his head he bent it down, and then dropped slowly into the water, which came nearly to ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... a path the donkey's hindquarters, mauve-grey, neatly clipped in a pattern of diamonds and lozenges, and a tail meditatively swishing as he picked his way among the stones, the head as yet hidden by the osier baskets of the pack. At the next turn I skipped ahead of the donkey and walked with the arriero, a dark boy in tight blue pants and short grey tunic cut to the waist, who had the strong cheek-bones, hawk nose and slender hips of an Arab, who spoke an aspirated ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... in an osier trap has more chance of freedom," said Wulf gloomily. "Let us at least be thankful that we are caged together—for how long, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... so often that it is familiar to most readers. The house stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar above Rydal Lake. The garden is terraced, and was full of flowering alleys in the poet's time. There was a tall ash-tree in which the thrushes always sung, and a laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung. There were stone steps, in which poppies and wild geraniums filled the interstices; and rustic seats here and there, where they all sat all day during the pleasant weather. The poet spent very little ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... impetuosity of his attack, and fury of his blows, rendered all their skill of fence useless. With his huge weapon and powerful arm, both of which he plied with a rapidity and force which there was no resisting, he broke through their guards as easily as he would have beat down so many osier wands, and wounded severely at every blow. It was in vain that Donald's assailants kept retiring before him, in the hope of getting him at a disadvantage—of finding an opportunity of having a cut or a thrust at him. No time was allowed them for any such ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... be the first. He was the first up on the day of action; he himself at four o'clock awoke Count d'Argenson, minister of war, who on the instant sent to ask Marshal Saxe for his final orders. The marshal was found in a carriage of osier-work, which served him for a bed, and in which he had himself drawn about when his exhausted powers no longer allowed him to sit his horse." The king and the dauphin had already taken up their positions of battle; the two villages of Fontenoy and Antoin, and the wood of Barri, were occupied by French ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the winding of the river Ouse. Far on every side stretches a homely landscape, tilth and pasture, hedgerow and clustered trees, to where the sky rests upon the gentle hills. Slow, silent, the river lapses between its daisied banks, its grey-green osier beds. Yonder is the little town of St. Neots. In all England no simpler bit of rural scenery; in all the world nothing of its kind more beautiful. Cattle are lowing amid the rich meadows. Here one may loiter and dream in utter restfulness, whilst the great white clouds ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... for it to come nearer to us, and to come more often. And it is partly because this craving is unsatisfied that we cower so fondly over our open hearths. Our fires are makeshifts for sunshine. Autumn after autumn, 'we see the swallows gathering in the sky, and in the osier-isle we hear their noise,' and our hearts sink. Happy, selfish little birds, gathering so lightly to fly whither we cannot follow you, will you not, this once, forgo the lands of your desire? 'Shall ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... appear to be giving himself any extra worry on account of this thing. On Sunday afternoon he sat huddled together in a big, fluffy osier-bush, down by the lake, and blew on a reed-pipe. All around him there sat as many finches and bullfinches and starlings as the bush could well hold—who sang songs which he tried to teach himself to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... mountains, which afforded a luxurious feast to the mind of the naturalist, he often passed the day in the pursuit of his favourite science. He was sometimes accompanied in these little excursions by Madame St. Aubert, and frequently by his daughter; when, with a small osier basket to receive plants, and another filled with cold refreshments, such as the cabin of the shepherd did not afford, they wandered away among the most romantic and magnificent scenes, nor suffered the charms of Nature's lowly children to abstract ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... wish to feast down in the city, Philotherus, but in the country, delighting myself with the breath of the west wind; sufficient couch for me is a strewing of boughs under my side, for at hand is a bed of native willow and osier, the ancient garland of the Carians; but let wine be brought, and the delightful lyre of the Muses, that drinking at our will we may sing the renowned bride of Zeus, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... full of courage and vigour, spreading cloths loose everywhere over the battlements to weaken the attacks of our weapons, and protected by shields strongly woven of osier, made a brave resistance, looking like figures of iron, since they had plates of iron closely fitting over every limb, which covered their whole person with ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... moss its spreading beard; Whose fate-lopp'd brow, the bat's and beetle's dome, Shook, as the hunted owl flew hooting home. His breast was bronzed by many an eastern blast, And fourscore winters seem'd he to have past; His thread-bare coat the supple osier bound, And with slow feet he press'd the sodden ground, Where, as he heard the wild-wing'd Eurus blow, He shook, from locks as white, December's snow; Inured to storm, his soul ne'er bid it cease, But lock'd within him meditated peace. Father, I ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... rushy-fringed bank, Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank, My sliding Chariot stayes, Thick set with Agat, and the azurn sheen Of Turkis blew, and Emrauld green That in the channell strayes, Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O're the Cowslips Velvet head, That bends not as I tread, Gentle swain at ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Athens, relates that the exiled Greeks who had seized on the Peiraeus made themselves shields of whitened osiers; and similar weapons of defence are still constructed by modern savages. The huts of the earliest settlers in Rome and in western Europe generally were made of osier work plastered with clay. Some interesting remains of British dwellings of this nature found near Lewes in 1877 were described by Major-General H. L. F. Pitt-Rivers in Archaeologia, vol. xlvi. pp. 456-458. Boats of the same material, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... tasselled silk night-shirt; and the dew drenched his feet as he swung along the pathway to the river. The old willow was full of small birds; they sat ruffling their feathers, and when Mike sprang into the boat they flew through the gray light, taking refuge in some osier-beds. And as he looked down stream he saw the night clouds dispersing in the wind. He pulled, making the boat shoot through the water for about a mile, then touched by the beauty of the landscape, paused to view it. Cattle lay in ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... so easy for those poor creatures to leave their homes, their working places! Some of them have been there thirty years. They are close to the two or three farms that employ them, close to the osier beds which give them extra earnings in the spring. If they were turned out there is nothing nearer than Murewell, and not a single cottage to be found there. I don't say it is a landlord's duty to provide more cottages than are wanted; but if the labour is wanted, the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forest culture, little is said of the willow, which forms a very interesting department. The white willow, Salix Candida, is often used for coarse work. S. Vinnunatis and S. Russelliana, are the most commonly used in the Eastern United States, under the name of Osier, or basket willow, and S. Forbyana, a variety of S. rubra, or the red willow is often used for fine work. In the Editor's recent visit to the Northwest a number of fine species were noted which would evidently be worth introducing ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... meadows widen out past Sutton's farm. From the front windows of the Manor Farm house you see them, green between the brown trunks of the elms on the road bank. From the back you look out across orchard and pasture to the black, still water and yellow osier beds above the Mill. Beyond the water a double line of beeches, bare delicate branches, rounded head after rounded head, climbs a hillock in a steep curve, to part and meet again in a ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... go himself. He resolved, therefore, to fight, and to fight in person: but he was still too good a general to be the assailant in the action. He strengthened his position on the hill where he had halted, by a palisade of stakes interlaced with osier hurdles, and there, he said, he would defend himself ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Capital; and, as the news flew, all France, resounded with the cry of Vive le Roi! Vive M. Necker! (Weber, i. 342.) In Paris indeed it unfortunately got the length of turbulence.' Petards, rockets go off, in the Place Dauphine, more than enough. A 'wicker Figure (Mannequin d'osier),' in Archbishop's stole, made emblematically, three-fifths of it satin, two-fifths of it paper, is promenaded, not in silence, to the popular judgment-bar; is doomed; shriven by a mock Abbe de Vermond; then solemnly consumed by fire, at the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sunshine, has it shipped A cupful aft, or deep in Neptune dipped. Plant cassias green around, thyme redolent, Full-flowering succory with heavy scent, And violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream. And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam, Of cork; or of the supple osier twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: —In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin. Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their narrow cells, and choke the crannies fast With pollen, or that gum specific which Out-binds or birdlime ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
