"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you fellows." Toby leant forward in his chair and emphasised his remarks with his ancient and powerful briar. "Every one in this room is—for want of a better word—blooded. We have all, thank Heavens! had the unforgettable pleasure of killing Huns at close quarters, with our own hands. Now that broadens one's horizon at once. We are not bounded by sandbags and stinks; when we ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... edge of the dressing-table, attired in pyjamas. The little stateroom was hazy with smoke, and my friend gripped the charred briar between his teeth and watched the blue-grey clouds arising from the bowl, in an abstracted way. I knew that he was thinking hard, and from the fact that he had exhibited no surprise when I had related to him the particulars ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... compared her with our young ladies, and even the handsome, dignified Anyuta Blagovo could not stand comparison with her; the difference was immense, like the difference between a beautiful, cultivated rose and a wild briar. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; 40 To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darknes thin, 50 And to the stack, or the Barn dore, Stoutly struts his Dames before, Oft list'ning how the Hounds and horn Chearly rouse the slumbring morn, From the side of som ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... because so many folks were looking for him. after several hours I circled around and got out of reach of all spectators then I made a bee line for upstream,—(as that is the way all lost hunters and tenderfeet go) after I had traveled about two miles I found a raveling on a briar and then I was sure I had a trail. This discovery gave me courage and I took up the labor with all the instinct of my nature. I followed his trail till pitch dark and camped under a maple tree till the gray dawn announced day—then I resumed my search; after ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... briar-root; he scarce looked up from that engrossing task. "Don't ast me what I think of him!" he said. "There's a day comin', I pray Gawd, when I can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one assails With wiles the poor lad's scrip, to leave him soon Stranded and supperless. He plaits meanwhile With ears of corn a right fine cricket-trap, And fits it on a rush: for vines, for scrip, Little he cares, enamoured of his toy. The cup is hung all round with lissom briar, Triumph of AEolian art, a wondrous sight. It was a ferryman's of Calydon: A goat it cost me, and a great white cheese. Ne'er yet my lips came near it, virgin still It stands. And welcome to such boon art thou, If for my sake ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... fond wretch! breathe not contagion here! No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn 30 Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! 35 You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Vandeford, as he put his bare heels, protruding from his Chinese slippers, up on the edge of the mahogany reading-table in his living-room, and began to pull at a long, evil-smelling, briar ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Merrily swinging on briar and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... was done, and the next morning he was waiting before the hall-door for his burden; and she, though somewhat loth at leaving the fine company, mounted him cheerfully enough, and they rode away, and they rode away, and they rode away, through thick briar brakes and up fearsome cliffs. But ever the Black Bull trod the brambles underfoot and chose the easiest paths, while she ate out of his left ear and drank out of his right, and wanted for nothing, though he ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... he got there," continued the other, bowing his head as he filled an old briar pipe with tobacco, "he found some one else. It's strange—and you may wonder how I know it all. But it's true. Back in England he had worshipped a young girl. Like the others, she detested him; and yet ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... his briar pipe, but Mutimer had ceased smoking. Near the latter was a vacant seat; Adela took it, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... forest, with here and there a settlement of dwellers in huts, tillers of the land, herdsmen, or hunters, there lived near the spot now occupied by the thriving town of Evesham a swineherd named Eoves. One day, we are told, a favourite sow was missing, and her master hunted brake and briar, far and near, in search of her. While on this errand he penetrated far into the depths of the forest, when suddenly he was startled by a radiant light, in which appeared three figures of women dazzling by their beauty. The vision faded, and on the spot the joyful herdsman ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... rough and narrow road, with thick hedges of thorn on either side, and branches of tangled briar hanging down from them, and lying across the path. Any traveller who travelled by that road would find ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... went out for a while, and when she returned she brought an odd volume of the History of Scotland to restless Charlie, and a late rose or two tied up with a bit of sweet-briar and thyme, ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... side of the door of Lord Beaconsfield, with its motto: "For God, King, and Country"; and there was a smell which comes of long years of herrings cooked on a gas grill. At last the hungry child had finished scraping his plate and wiping his moustache with his hands. He brought out a briar pipe, and a pouch of hairy skin, and faded behind a blue cloud. From behind the cloud he spoke at large, like a confident disreputable Jove who had been skylarking for years with the little ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... at home.—O my breath is nearly gone. You soldiers are so accustomed to marching and countermarching, that you drag me over hedge and briar, like an empty baggage-wagon. Look at my arm, young Mars, you've made it as red as pink, and as rough as—then my hand—don't attempt to kiss it, ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... fingerlets, that clutched At good and bad, they so did glove, That they might pick the flowers of love, Unscathed, from every briar ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... of the wooden horse, the rascal that we ride; Let us see the mighty shoulders that will never, never fail. To lift him high, and plant him, on the crooked rail astride. The seven-sided pine rail, the pleasant bed of briar, The little touch of hickory law, with a ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of him, thirty yards away, lay a thicket or undergrowth, and he watched it incessantly. It seemed to him now that he knew every bush and briar and vine. Presently a briar moved, and then a bush, and then a vine, but they moved against the wind, and the sharp eyes of the watcher saw it. He sank a little lower and the muzzle of his rifle stole forward. He made not the slightest sound, and good eyes, only a few yards away, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... whether wander you? Fai. Ouer hil, ouer dale, through bush, through briar, Ouer parke, ouer pale, through flood, through fire, I do wander euerie where, swifter then y Moons sphere; And I serue the Fairy Queene, to dew her orbs vpon the green. The Cowslips tall, her pensioners bee, In their gold coats, spots you see, Those be Rubies, Fairie fauors, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... help sighing out as she looked anxiously along the lane ere turning in, and then said, 'My good lad, I don't want to get you to be telling tales, but it would set my heart at rest, and his poor brother's up there, if you could tell me he is not gone to Briar Alley.' ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she became ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... evening was chill a fire glittered and sparkled and the deep blue curtains were drawn. Ronder was wearing brown kid slippers and a dark velvet smoking-jacket. As he lay back in the deep arm-chair, smoking an old and familiar briar, his chubby face was deeply contented. His eyes were almost closed; he was the very symbol of ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... One to whom heav'n gave beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of heav'n in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely, spotless paper, when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... ma'am," Mrs. Cheeseman said to Widow Shanks quite early, "if you take a farthing less than half a guinea a week for your dimity-parlour, with the window up the hill, and the little door under the big sweet-briar, I shall think that you are not ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... seamstress in the parish, the one who sewed for the young ladies at Loevdala Manor, and when Glory Goldie tried it on the effect was so perfect that one would have thought the two had blossomed together on one of the lovely wild briar bushes ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... which they are subject. What a cruel reflection, that a rich country cannot long be a free one. M. de Laye has a Diana and Endymion, a very superior morsel of sculpture by Michael Angelo Slodtz, done in 1740. The wild gooseberry is in leaf; the wild pear and sweet-briar in bud. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Coyote had come to live on the Green Meadows, Peter had been afraid to go very far from the dear Old Briar-patch where he makes his home, and where he always feels safe. Now there wasn't any reason why he should go far from the dear Old Briar-patch. There was plenty to eat in it and all around it, for sweet clover grew almost up to the very edge of it, and you know ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... had grown leaner than ever since he had begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... and sank into an arm-chair by the study fire, knocking out his briar on a coal and carefully refilling and lighting that invaluable collaborator. With his data presently arranged in better mental order, he returned to the table and covered page after page with facile reasoning. Then the drowsiness which he could not altogether shake off crept upon ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was "the right sort," and proceeding to light it—"now, we can ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... poke the fire, I snugly settle, My pipe I prime with proper care; The water's purring in the kettle, Rum, lemon, sugar, all are there. And now the honest grog is steaming, And now the trusty briar's aglow: Alas! in smoking, drinking, dreaming, How sadly swift the ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... in goodly packs. And as they passed, their voices rose above the general din, calling "Fair lemons and oranges, oranges and citrons!" "Cherries, sweet cherries, ripe and red!" "New flounders and great plaice; buy my dish of great eels!" "Rosemary and sweet briar; who'll buy my lavender?" "Fresh cheese and cream!" "Lily-white vinegar!" "Dainty sausages!" which calls, being frequently intoned to staves of melody, fell with pleasant sounds upon the ear. [These hawkers so seriously ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... carved chest at the southern end of the passage. The window behind us gives an extensive view of grey rain and grey sea. But I prefer to look at the smiling, freckled face that speaks so eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and occasionally "h-less" English, as she tells me how the Andersons ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... his wing In the briar'd dell below; Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing, To the night-mares ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... remembering as she did, how he took it, had its part in the freedom which he presently found for offering hospitality on his own account, not at his home, as he explained to them, his sister being away, but say a dinner at Briar Crest to which they might motor out pleasantly Saturday afternoon, returning by moonlight. He offered Briar Crest tentatively on the strength of the Lessings having once given a dinner there, and was relieved to find that he had made ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... enough, of course, but a little. He was plannin' to take on more, but somehow it never seemed as if he could die, he so big and strong, and we put it off until he got so he couldn't pass the examination. When the insurance money come I took it to Jedge Briar, a mighty good friend of Jubal's and mine and the one that held the mortgage on the house, and I told him I wanted to pay off the mortgage with it, so's I'd have the house free and clear. But the Jedge advised me not to, said the mortgage was costin' me only ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... small and heightened faces Like wine-red winter buds; Their frolic bodies gentle as Flakes in the air that pass, Frail as the twirling petal From the briar of the woods. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you, they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose, of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn to a scarf. As a neat English expression has it, "they fish for compliments," and sometimes for better ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... * Forgive the past! Henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface Of your dwellings. The lilac in the spring Shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale Its fragrant smell. E'en the drooping fuchsia Shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; While the weeping willow, pointing downwards, Speaks significantly to the living, That a grave awaits ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... season for bark-gathering was past, another source of industry presented itself. The bottom lands of the great river were found to be covered with a network of underwood, and among this underwood the principal plant was a well-known briar, Smilax officinalis. This is the creeping plant that yields the celebrated "sarsaparilla;" and Don Pablo, having made an analysis of some roots, discovered it to be the most valuable species—for it is to be remembered, that, like the cinchona, a whole ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... above you, the wind is drawing deep and grand harmonies; and often your way is beside a marsh, verdant with magnolias, where the yellow jessamine, now in flower, fills the air with fragrance, and the bamboo-briar, an evergreen creeper, twines itself with various other plants, which never shed their leaves in winter. These woods abound in game, which, you will believe me when I say, I had rather start than shoot,—flocks of turtle-doves, rabbits rising and scudding before you; ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... them down the summer shroggs Which grew both under a briar, And set them three score rood in twain, To shoot the ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... in slow gulps, and after each one he lifted his eyes to Rose Mary's face as if rendering courteous appreciation for the consumed portion. His chubby fingers were clasped around her wrist as she held the cup for him, and her other hand cuddled one of his bare, briar-scratched knees. The picture had its instituted effect on Everett, and he bent toward the little group in the doorway and rested his elbows on his knees as his world-restless eyes softened and the lines around his mouth melted ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... white carpets doing what they best liked—some played games, chess or draughts, but these were mostly the old men who were glad to be still: the young ones fenced and tilted. Under a pine tree, close to a sweet-briar, a seat of massive gold was placed, and on it sat the Emperor of the fair country of France, a strong man, with his beard white as snow. But his rest was short. Soon came the messengers of the Saracen King, and, descending from their mules, they ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... soldierly old man with the fierce moustache, and the trim, military young man with one that was close cropped and smart. Each wore a blue serge suit and affected a short visored cap of the same material, and each lazily puffed at a very commonplace briar pipe. They in turn were watching the sprightly parade with an interest that was calmly impersonal. They saw no one person who deserved more than a casual glance, and yet the motley crowd passed before them, ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... It prickles my throat so sore— If I get out o' the prickly briar, I'll never get ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... how long the discussion might have continued—probably for days or weeks—had not the older girl, now flushed of face and rather pretty, looked at me and said breathlessly (she was as sharp as a briar): ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... find Buck trying to follow him—trying to, because the old man, who hated to see anybody or anything but himself have his way, had chained a heavy block to him to keep him from doing what nature had intended him to do—roam the woods and poke his long nose in every briar patch after rabbits. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... shepherdesses. To increase the rustic effect Spenser uses strange forms of speech and obsolete words, to such an extent that Jonson complained his works are not English or any other language. Some are melancholy poems on his lost Rosalind; some are satires on the clergy; one, "The Briar and the Oak," is an allegory; one flatters Elizabeth, and others are pure fables touched with the Puritan spirit. They are written in various styles and meters, and show plainly that Spenser was practicing and preparing ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... pale-red silk bordered with white thread and fastened on the breast with a small brooch like a wheel of silver. The hues upon that silk were never the same. His tunic of fine linen was girt at the waist with a leathern zone, stained to the resemblance of the wild-briar rose. It descended to but did not pass his beautiful knees, falling into many plaits. The tunic was cut low at the neck, exposing his throat and the knot in the throat and the cup-shaped indentation above the breast. On his feet were comely shoes sparkling with bronze plates. They ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... the edge of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine, Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom, Denys, the priest, hath told me 'twas the lord Apollo's shrine In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin's womb. I never go past but I doff my cap and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... with haggard eyes And hands that fence away the skies, On rock and briar stumbling, Is it fear of the storm's rumbling, Of the hissing cold rain, Or lightning's tragic pain Drives you so madly? See, see the patient moon; How she her course keeps Through cloudy shallows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... Irish maid, Picks roses sweet in briar's shade; On higher briar, by the rock, Are ten Sparrows in a flock, That sit and sing By cooling spring, When shoot one! shoot two! Comes sportsman Tom in ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... a lawn sloped easterly to the border of a brook, which straggled behind the outhouses into a meadow, and finally lost itself among the rocks on the shore. Up by the lawn a willow hung over it, and its outer bank was fringed by the tangled wild-grape, sweet-briar, and alder bushes. The premises, except on the seaside, were enclosed by a high wall of rough granite. No houses were near us, on either side of the shore; up the north road they ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the man's face faded, a gleam of whimsical humour shone in his eyes. He took an old briar out of his pocket and commenced to fill it; and soon the blue smoke was curling lazily upwards into the still air. But he still stood motionless, staring over the moors, his hands deep in the pockets of the old shooting coat ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... thou tak'st from me all the rest, Thyself with each resumption drawing nigher, It shall but hurt me as the thorn of the briar, When I reach to the pale flower in its breast. To have thee, Lord, is to have all thy best, Holding it by its very life divine— To let my friend's hand go, and take his ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... ended so far as sleep was concerned. Arrayed in his dressing-gown, Smith sat in the white cane chair in my study with a glass of brandy-and-water beside him, and (despite my official prohibition) with the cracked briar which had sent up its incense in many strange and dark places of the East and which yet survived to perfume these prosy rooms in suburban London, steaming between his teeth. I stood with my elbow resting upon the mantelpiece looking down at him ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... to-day any the quicker. Poor, brave, noble, drawling, manly, pipe-smoking fellows! On this particular occasion FOOTLES uttered only one word. It was short, and began with the fourth letter of the alphabet. But he may be pardoned, for some of the glowing embers from his magnificent briar-wood pipe had dropped on to his regulation overalls. The result was painful—to FOOTLES. All the others laughed as well as they could, with clays, meerschaums, briars, and asbestos pipes in their mouths. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... So much lower than the company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint of him ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of literary infamies as In the Ranks and Harbour Lights. Artistic atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he keeps for ambiguous ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of broken ground, matted thickets and tangled windfalls. Joe got a glimpse of dark ravines and heard the music of tumbling waters; he saw gray cliffs grown over with vines, and full of holes and crevices; steep ridges, covered with dense patches of briar and hazel, rising in the way. Yet the Shawnee always found an ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... woods with his shot-gun and his butterfly-net, and his evenings in mounting the many specimens he has acquired. Among his minor peculiarities are that he is careless as to his attire, unclean in his person, exceedingly absent-minded in his habits, and addicted to smoking a short briar pipe, which is seldom out of his mouth. He has been upon several scientific expeditions in his youth (he was with Robertson in Papua), and the life of the camp and the canoe is ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sweet Briar Farm.-Ernest spent Sunday with us, and I have just driven him to the station and seen him safely off. Things have prospered with us to such a degree that he has been extravagant enough to give me the use, for the summer, of a bonnie little nag and an antiquated ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him down; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-Fellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face or a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... you will agree that tribulation is every such thing as troubleth and grieveth a man either in body or mind, and is as it were the prick of a thorn, a bramble, or a briar thrust into his flesh or into his mind. And surely, cousin, the prick that very sore pricketh the mind surpasseth in pain the grief that paineth the body, almost as far as doth a thorn sticking in the heart surpass and exceed in pain the thorn that is thrust ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... d'Angibault, which she ascribes to "a walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise;" a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The stream, left to follow its devices, had forced its way through the sand and the grass in a network of little waterfalls, covered below in the summer time with thick tufts ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... two—the cool solitude of the wood would ease the weight of the burden and the throbbing of nerves and brain. The setting sun shone full upon the leafy edge of the wood; hazelnut and beech and oak and clumps of briar rose quivered under the rough kiss of the wind that blew straight across the lowland from the southwest, bringing with it still the confusion of sounds—the weird cannonades and dismal bugle-calls—in such strange contrast to the rustle of the leaves and the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... a fairy fiddle or flute Fashioned out of a briar root; The fairies join their notes, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Dick Rendal felt in his pockets for a cigar-case; was annoyed and amused (in a sub-conscious sort of way) to find only a briar pipe and a pocketful of coarse-cut tobacco; filled and lit his ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy perfume. From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline. A clock struck seven, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fellow seemed completely restored by his repose. He ate more than his share of the eggs and bacon, and drank five cups of tea. Then he stretched himself, lit a clay pipe, and offered us his tobacco box, from which the Reverend filled his briar. I remained true to my packet of "Queen of the Harem." I shall think twice before chucking up cig. smoking as long as "Queen of the Harem" don't go above tuppence-half-penny ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... get Good words or meat. Like as my parlour, so my hall And kitchen's small; A little butterie, and therein A little byn, Which keeps my little loafe of bread Unchipt, unflead. Some sticks of thorn or briar Make me a fire, Close by whose loving coals I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confesse too, when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all those other bits that bee There placed by thee; The worts, the purslain, and the messe Of water-cresse, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the heart of one who viewed it that morning from the summit of the gently-curving Tamfield Hill Robert McIntyre stood with his elbows upon a gate-rail, his Tam-o'-Shanter hat over his eyes, and a short briar-root pipe in his mouth, looking slowly about him, with the absorbed air of one who breathes his fill of Nature. Beneath him to the north lay the village of Tamfield, red walls, grey roofs, and a scattered bristle of ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grazed upon by sheep, as was once the case, grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... merely grasped his recovered treasure, feasting his soul upon the knowledge that here, within the space of one small cube, lay the promise of sleep, peace of mind, oblivion. Then, with unsteady hands, he opened the tin: took from his pocket a briar of great age and greater virtue; filled it; lighted it; and drew in the first mouthful of aromatic fragrance, with such rapture of refreshment as a man, parched with fever, drains a glass ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... buryed in the lower chancel, And William in the higher: Out of her brest there sprang a rose, And out of his a briar. ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-briar wind rushing over the young grass. Refulgent fall the golden rays of the sun; a minute only, the clouds cover him and the hedge is dark. The bloom of the gorse is shut like a book; but it is there—a few hours of warmth and the covers will fall open. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a fleet, confused crowd; With wafture of blown garments bright as fire, Light, light of foot and laughing, morning-browed, And where they trod the jonquil and the briar Thrilled into jocund life, the dreaming dells Waked to a morrice chime of jostled bells;— They danced! they danced! to piping such as flings The garnered music of a million Springs Into one single, keener ecstasy;— One paused and shouted to my questionings: ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... Hapley called upon the Vicar, and argued with him upon theological questions. They sat in the little arbour covered with briar, and smoked as they wrangled. "Look at that moth!" said Hapley, suddenly, pointing to the edge ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the original pair of seven-leagued boots, not that I might make such fast time, but that I might kick him at a single kick from one county to another, and back, and then over and over past counting. I'd duck him in a river until he gasped for breath, I'd drag him naked through a briar patch, and then I'd tar and feather him, and ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... star-like flowers; the muscadine grape-vines, with their dark purple clusters; the bignonias, with trumpet-shaped corollas; the smilacae, among which are conspicuous the Smilax rotundifolia, the thick bamboo-briar, and the balsamic sarsaparilla. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... Arius,[9] and those fools who were as swords unto the Scriptures in making their straight faces crooked. Let not the people still be too secure in judgment, like him who reckons up the blades in the field ere they are ripe. For I have seen the briar first show itself stiff and wild all winter long, then bear the rose upon its top. And I have seen a bark ere now ran straight and swift across the sea through all its course, to perish at last at entrance of the harbor. Let not dame Bertha and master Martin, seeing one rob, and another make ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... moors are covered with Cornish heath, and the bogs with Orange-bell, and lovely they are to see; and growing among them is a tall heath six feet high, which they call there bruyere, or Broomheath, because they make brooms of it: and out of its roots the "briar-root" pipes are made. There are other heaths about that country, too, whose names I do not know; so that when you are there, you fancy yourself in the very home of the heaths: but you are not. They must have come from some land near where the Azores are now; ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... Men, who a moment before would have been delighted with a pone of cornbread and a piece of fat meat, discuss the comparative merits of peaches and milk and fresh tomatoes, lobster and roast beef, and, forgetting the briar-root pipe, faithful companion of the vicissitudes of the soldier's life, snuff the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... were outwitted as well as outrun. A few words will explain Martin's conduct. We arrive at causes by noting coincidences; yet, now and then, coincidences are deceitful. As we have all seen a hare tumble over a briar just as the gun went off, and so raise expectations, then dash them to earth by scudding away untouched, so the burgomaster's mule put her foot in a rabbit-hole at or about the time the crossbow bolt whizzed innocuous over her head: she fell and threw both ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... till Aunt Geoffrey came in, just as the last stroke of the Church-bell died away, bringing in her hand a fragrant spray of the budding sweet-briar. ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have any adventures with them," said the bunny uncle, "though the horse chestnut tree did help me the other day by tossing the bad bear over into the briar bush. But these trees ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... in the garden appear in the winter like beautiful plantations of young trees in blossom; and perfume the air. Myrtle, sweet-briar, sweet-marjoram, sage, thyme, lavender, rosemary, with many other aromatic herbs and flowers, which with us require the most careful cultivation, are here ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth; the smaller bushes—hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose—also assume graceful forms unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual and experimental ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... him—be like her—so runs the third head of the etiquette-card. Be not slovenly and disorderly and unseemly in your livery. Let not your livery be always falling off, and catching on every bush and briar, and dropping into every pool and ditch. Hold yourselves in hand, the instruction goes on. Brace yourselves up. Have your temper, your tongue, your eyes, your ears, and all your members in control. And then you will escape many a rent ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... already two loads of hay were being stacked, they were hailed with a cheery shout by several other labourers at work, and very soon a strong smell of beer began to mingle with the odour of the hay and the dewy scent of the elder flowers and sweet briar in ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... because his scorned though wedded wife told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing his mistress to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she was not on board; but all versions, I think, agree in ending with the fact, that the briar-rose growing on the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its flowers and thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the other, and knit together, as love had knit together with its sweet blossoms and sharp spines, the two fated lovers. The Middle Ages were enthralled ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... unusually beautiful day in early June that two briar-mangled and weather-beaten young men, bearing every evidence of Wall Street and excessive fright, might have been seen sitting up like a brace of startled rabbits in a patch of ferns which grew along the edges of a brook at the foot of a charmingly wooded slope ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... responded Roy. "I've got it now. Inte, minte, cute corn, apple seeds and briar thorn, briar thorn and limber lock, three geese in a flock, one flew east and one flew west, one flew into a cuckoo's nest, O-U-T out, with a ragged dish clout, out!" ending ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... from head to foot, and his gaze was returned with stolid defiance. Nicholas did not flinch, but for the first time he felt ashamed of his ugliness, of his coarse clothes, of his briar-scratched legs, of his freckles, and of the unalterable colour of his hair. He wished with all his heart that he were safely in the field with his father, driving the one-horse harrow across upturned furrows. He didn't want to learn anything any more. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... came to mind as I drove down the same road last year just after fine weather had come! It was the same season, and the hedges on each side of the narrow lane were fragrant as then with may and sweet briar.' ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... revolution," said Charles pleasantly, refilling his foul old briar—"the great day when Fleet Street ran with blood and the pipe-smokers put up barricades in the Strand, and Piccadilly became a reeking shambles. Have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... See! It has smashed itself three feet deep and more, a pitfall for horse and rider, a trap to the unwary. There is a briar rose smashed to death; there is grass uprooted and a teazle crushed aside, a farmer's drain pipe snapped and the edge of the pathway broken down. Destruction! So they are doing all over the world, all over the order and decency the world ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... fond wretch! breathe not contagion here! No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! You, O ye wingless ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... climb the mountain, first through brown woods of beech and oak, then through pine and broom, and then across red stony ledges where only a pinched growth of lentisk and briar spread in patches over the rock. By this time he thought to have reached his goal, but for two more days he fared on through the same scene, with the sky close over him and the green valleys of earth receding far below. Sometimes for hours he saw only the red glistering slopes tufted ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... and the making of Christ the Beloved the centre round which it moves, and from which it draws radiance and light and motion. By all these methods, and many more that I cannot dwell upon now, the problem is triumphantly solved by Christianity. The tree is made good, and 'instead of the briar shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and reel, O hear me; Change us both upon the instant: I'll become a wild rose-briar, And my love a ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... with their canvas and blankets and boilers and pannikins well against hunger and weather. Picture them—CALLOT'S free brush might have managed it—gathered in pow-wow around the camp-fire, Sun-tanned and wind-browned, in picturesque raiment, with wisp of the wild hop or trail of the briar Hat-wreathed or button-holed. BURNS should have sung of them; trim-skirted Muse, with punctilious tastes, Were not at home with these waifs from the rookery, pastured at large in free Nature's wild wastes, Bounding, and breathing fresh air, romping, wrestling, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... masked battery; for he knew that the Frenchman was ignorant of his connection with one of the leading political papers of the day. It was a duel between sheer skill and confident foreknowledge. When Mr. Bodery spoke, Sidney Carew leant back in his chair and puffed vigorously at his briar pipe. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... trace of her; but instead of growing tired of his search he only became the more anxious to find her. One day, as he was riding through a wood, he came upon a sweet-smelling hedge, all made of honeysuckle and sweet-briar, so high that he could not climb it, and so thick that he could ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... your scouts, either cycling or on foot, to go in any direction they like, to get a specimen of any ordered plant, say a sprig of yew, a shoot of ilex, a horseshoe mark from a chestnut tree, a briar rose, or something of that kind, whichever you may order, such as will tax their knowledge of plants and will test their memory as to where they noticed one of the kind required and will also make them quick in getting ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... off as long as I can. If I was only a little countess in her own feudal keep, I would get up in the dawn, and gather flowers in the May dew—primroses and eglantine!—Charlie says it is affected to call sweet-briar eglantine.—Sylvia! Sylvia! that thorn has got hold of me; and there's Aunt Barbara coming down the lane in the baker's jiggeting cart.—Oh dear! was it only dreaming? I thought I was gathering dog-roses with Charlie and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which we inspire When it is free to come and go; And sound of brook and scent of briar Rise freshest where the breezes blow, That feed our breath ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... conceived another settlement in America, and for colonists he would have all these down-trodden and oppressed. He would gather, if he might, only those who when helped would help themselves—who when given opportunity would rise out of old slough and briar. He was personally open to the appeal of still another class of unfortunate men. He had seen upon the Continent the distress of the poor and humble Protestants in Catholic countries. Folk of this kind—from France, from ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... not black outright; and Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched - then the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not something to be worn through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. "My denty May, either your heid's fair turned, or there's some ongoings!" he observed, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same way. The past few years, however, have seen its growth from an obscure and inaccessible settlement to a shrine. It is only of quite recent date that a glimpse of Rottingdean has become almost as necessary to the Brighton visitor as the journey to the Dyke. Had the Legend of the Briar Rose never been painted; had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd remained unchronicled and the British soldier escaped the label "Absent-minded Beggar," Rottingdean might still be invaded only occasionally; for it was when, following Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... find some relief from his tormenting thoughts. He was just inside the Langrigg boundary and imagined the gamekeeper began his round at the other end of the estate. By and by dry underbrush rustled and there was a noise like a briar dragging across somebody's clothes. Afterwards all was quiet for a few moments, until a dark figure came out of the gloom close to ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... home. Then, one starlight night, their mother, having returned from hunting, awoke them, and, withholding their usual nourishment, gave the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along the dark passage, and ventured, close at her heels, into the grass-patch in the middle of the briar-brake. Vulp was slightly more timid than his sisters were; even at that early age he showed signs of independence and distrust. While the other cubs played "follow-my-leader" with the dam, he hung back, hesitating and afraid. Even ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... you," said the other, a stolid Englishman with a briar pipe, "he struck me as an ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Edinburgh, he entered the University of that city. At the close of a philosophical curriculum, he devoted himself to legal pursuits, and became a writer to the Signet. In 1851 he published "Marican, and other Poems," in one volume octavo. Another poetical work, entitled "The Briar of Threave," appeared from his pen in 1855. Mr Inglis is at present engaged with pieces illustrative of the history of the Covenant, which may afterwards be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... briar, and, taking from a drawer in the writing table a thick MS., sat down and began to study the closely-written pages. The paper was in the cramped handwriting of the late Sir Michael Ferrara, his travelling companion through many strange adventures; and the sun had been ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... we passed out of the old church through a side door leading into a small green enclosure, now gloomy in the shade of the old stone walls. At one end was a tangle of briar, and here were some old graves, each with a tinsel wreath or two on the iron cross. And presiding over these was the limp figure of a one-legged man on two crutches, who saluted us. We passed along to the end of the inclosure, where lay a chance beam of sunshine like a bar of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... the sandal, the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted alone ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... King's Son was going, traveling through wood and waste until the coming on of night. The little fluttering birds were going from the bush tops, from tuft to tuft, and to the briar-roots, going to rest; but if they were, he was not, till the night came on, blind and dark. Then the King's Son ate his bread and meat, put his satchel under his head and lay down to take his rest on the ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... these unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hardly that. I then set in to help him. I didn't know much, but I did the best I could. Sometimes he would write with a piece of charcoal or the p'int of a burnt stick on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country town, and I made some ink out of blackberry briar-root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas ate the paper after a while. I made Abe's first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We had no geese them days. After he learned to write his name he was scrawlin' it everywhere. Sometimes he would write ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... were to go was a narrow path, with a rough place now and then, and now and then a briar or sharp stone upon it, but for the most part it was a pleasant way. The travelers hastened joyfully along it and all went well with them until, one day, they met a man whose face was turned toward the land from which they had ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... shortcoming from bygone days attended other aspects of the scene. Instead of fiery oratory and pipes of peace—the stone calumets of old—the vigorous arguments, the outbursts of passion, and close calls from threatened violence, here was a gathering of commonplace men smoking briar-roots, with treaty tobacco instead of "weed," and whose chiefs replied to Mr. Laird's explanations and offers in a few brief and sensible statements, varied by vigorous appeals to the common sense and judgment, rather than the ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair |
