"Gorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I have said, was impenetrable above; but it was burrowed at its base by over-ground runs of some wild animal—not, I think, a very large one; they were just like the runs which rabbits make among gorse and heather, only on a bigger scale—bigger, even, than a fox's or badger's. By crouching and bending our backs, we could crawl through them with difficulty into the scrubby tangle. It was hard work creeping. The runs divided soon. Colebrook felt with his hands on the ground: "I can ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... dancers come from the scattered farmhouses in every direction. In Ballyfuchsia, they dance on a flat piece of road under some fir-trees and larches, with stretches of mountain covered with yellow gorse or purple heather, and the quiet lakes lying in the distance. A message comes down to us at Ardnagreena—where we commonly spend our Sunday afternoons—that they expect a good dance, and the blind boy is coming to fiddle; and 'so if you will be coming up, it's welcome you'll be.' ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cellar. I have seen worms in black peat in a boggy field; but they are extremely rare, or quite absent in the drier, brown, fibrous peat, which is so much valued by gardeners. On dry, sandy or gravelly tracks, where heath with some gorse, ferns, coarse grass, moss and lichens alone grow, hardly any worms can be found. But in many parts of England, wherever a path crosses a heath, its surface becomes covered with a fine short sward. Whether this change of vegetation is due to the taller ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... Isthmic sanctuary of Poseidon, passed through the village of Kalamaki, whence steamers run to Athens, then continued along the shore between Mount Geroneia and the sea, through a low, uneven country, well grown with pine, heather, arbute, gorse in the full splendor of its yellow blossoms, and sweet-smelling thyme. The afternoon was warm and bright. Here and there were flocks of long-haired sheep and sturdy black goats, cropping the grass and the shrubs, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... up the field with the lane on my right, down which ran a runnel of water, from which doubtless the house derived its name. I soon came to an unenclosed part of the mountain covered with gorse and whin, and still proceeding upward reached a road, which I subsequently learned was the main road from Llangollen over the hill. I was not long in gaining the top which was nearly level. Here I stood for some time looking about me, having the vale of Llangollen to the north of me, and a deep ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... have no imagination, Ann. I am ten times more destructive now than I was then. The moral passion has taken my destructiveness in hand and directed it to moral ends. I have become a reformer, and, like all reformers, an iconoclast. I no longer break cucumber frames and burn gorse bushes: I shatter ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... hunting, and it is sometimes a marvel that he does not take the advice which Job got from his wife. But now all things were smiling, and it was soon known that his lordship intended to draw Craigattan Gorse. Now in those parts there is no surer find, and no better chance of a run, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to the world and to his fellows had slipped very easily from his unresisting shoulders. The glory of a perfect English midsummer lay like a golden spell upon the land. The moors were purple with heather, touched here and there with the fire of the flaming gorse, the wind blew always from the west, the gardens were ablaze with slowly bursting rhododendrons. Every gleam of coloring, every breath of perfume, seemed to carry him unresistingly back to the days of his boyhood. He fished once more in the trout streams; he threw away his stick, and tramped ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the hospital lay through Crabtree Moor, and as Sara took her way across the rough strip of moorland, dotted with clumps of gorse and heather, her thoughts flew back to that day when she and Garth had encountered Black Brady there, and to the ridiculous quarrel which had ensued in consequence of Garth's refusal to condone the man's offence. For days they had ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Purple heath, golden gorse, and tufts of broom. Tall pines with branches like steps to tempt you to climb. Regular precipices after climbing above the sand-pit, from which you could jump into the soft sand, and then slide and roll down ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... underneath contrasts with the green, and adds to its brilliancy; it drinks in, too, the rain greedily, so that the wide common is nearly always fit for walking; and the air, unlike the heavy atmosphere of the University beneath it, is fresh and bracing. The gorse was still in bloom, in the latter end of the month of June, when Reding and Sheffield took up their abode in a small cottage at the upper end of this village—so hid with trees and girt in with meadows that for the stranger it was hard to find—there to pass their ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Turks, writes an eyewitness in the Sentry, gave us "our first taste of bombing. They crawled down a small gully and threw eight or nine bombs on to our gun emplacement, hurting no one, but putting the gun out for twenty minutes." Meanwhile they fired the gorse in front of ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... Spencer, and it at once set vigorously to work, recommending prizes for essays on twenty-four subjects, some of which are in the first volume of the Society's Journal. Prizes were also offered for the best draining-plough, the best implement for crushing gorse, for a ploughing match to be held at the first country meeting of the Society fixed at Oxford in 1839, for the best cultivated farm in Oxfordshire and the adjacent counties, and for the invention of any ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... where the gorse was out, he saw Edgar walking lazily beside the mare, who nodded her white-starred forehead as she dragged the clanking load of coal. The young farmer's face lighted up as he saw his friend. Edgar was good-looking, with dark, warm eyes. His clothes were old and rather disreputable, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... were put into the gorse, and the red-coats began to move out of the field into the lane, Sir Everard and Lady ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... make you glad? They are one of our three signs, you know, of the approaching holidays. One sign was the first sight of the summer steamer going across the bay; another was May eve, when these island-fellows light big gorse fires all over the mountains, and throw yellow marsh-lilies at their doors to keep off the fairies. Do you remember, Eddy, gathering some last May eve, and sitting out in the playground till sunset, watching the fires begin to twinkle on Cronck-Irey ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... grave should be Upon the bare top of a sunny hill, Among the moorlands of her own fair land, Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones In gorse and heather all embosomed. There should be no tall stone, no marble tomb Above her gentle corse;—the ponderous pile Would press too rudely on those fairy limbs. The turf should lightly he, that marked ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... went bursting through the scrub, snipers who had crept in close during the night and hidden in the bushes and behind rocks broke like rabbits out of gorse when ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... me level as a meadow, stretching to the horizon, and although I knew how deceptive is distance, I could not realize that what from Kerselec seemed to be mere grassy hollows were great valleys covered with gorse and heather, and what looked like scattered boulders were in reality ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... he reads? A man has usually to work through much mud before he gets his nugget. It is so certainly in hunting, and a big wood too frequently afflicts the sportsman, as the mud does the miner. The small gorse cover is the happy, much-envied bit of ground in which the gold is sure to show itself readily. But without the woods the gorse would not hold the foxes, and without the mud the gold would not ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... bracken of beech woods. About twenty miles from Port Burdock there came a region of hop gardens and hoast crowned farms, and further on, to be reached only by cheap tickets at Bank Holiday times, was a sterile ridge of very clean roads and red sand pits and pines and gorse and heather. The Three Ps could not afford to buy bicycles and they found boots the greatest item of their skimpy expenditure. They threw appearances to the winds at last and got ready-made workingmen's hob-nails. There was much discussion and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... them sloped up to meet the blue sky, the golden gorse spread its splendid tapestry against the green pasture. There was the tiny house, the one house in Ireland for Nora; its very windows watched her coming. A whiff of turf-smoke flickered above the chimney, the white walls were as white as the clouds above; there was a figure moving ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... holding the mouldering bones of some forgotten chieftain, laid to rest, how many centuries ago, with the rude mourning of a savage clan. I stood on one of the highest of these the other day, on a great gorse-clad headland, and sent my spirit out in quest of the old warrior that lay below—"Audisne haec, Amphiaraee, sub terram condite?" But there was no answer from the air; though in my sleep one night I saw a wild, red-bearded man, in a coat of skins, with ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... infuses into them the indefinable quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is not the absence of faults that constitutes a masterpiece, but that it is flame, it is life, it is emotion, it is sincerity. Under the touch of Mr. Simmons the personal accent speaks; to his creative power flame and life respond, and to no sculptor is the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and gazed pathetically out of the window. Her eyes rested on the bed where the hyacinths were planted, and beyond it to gorse bushes ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... with snow, rolled down in long sweeps to the salt water: and under the last sloping oak of the park there was a gorse-bushed lane, green in Summer, but now bearing cumbrous blossom—like burdens of the crisp snow-fall. Mrs. Lovell sat on horseback here, and alone, with her gauntleted hand at her waist, charmingly habited in tone with the landscape. She expected a cavalier, and did not perceive the approach ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the country had materially changed since their descent of the hill. In place of the richly-cultivated district which lay on the other side, a broad brown tract of waste land spread out before them, covered with scattered patches of gorse, stunted fern, and low brushwood, presenting an unvaried surface of unbaked turf. The shallow coat of sod was manifested by the stones that clattered under the horse's hoofs as he rapidly traversed the arid soil, clearing with ease to himself, though ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said his lordship wasn't in. As I came away, I saw him, as I thought, pass the lodge and go up the road, and I cut after him, but couldn't overtake him, and at last lost sight of him. I struck into a tangled sort of pathway through the gorse, or whatever it's called down here, and it brought me out near the river. His lordship was just sculling down, and then I knew it was some one else had gone by the lodge, and not him. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... my own travels gives some faint idea of the sentiment which dictated this remark. At St. Helena the flora of the North and South singularly meet. Patches of gorse (Ulex Europæa)—that idol of Linnæus and ornament of our English and Cambrian wastes—grow freely on the higher grounds, rivalling the purple heath in their golden bloom, and shrubs of warmer climates in their sweet perfume. Returning to England after lonely wanderings ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... a swinging chair with a little awning above it, is enshrined in a spacious half hemisphere of glass which forms a pavilion commanding the garden, and, beyond it, a barren but lovely landscape of hill profile with fir trees, commons of bracken and gorse, ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... peace My soul was nurst, amid the loveliest scenes Of-unpolluted nature. Sweet it was, As the white mists of morning roll'd away, To see the mountain's wooded heights appear Dark in the early dawn, and mark its slope With gorse-flowers glowing, as the rising sun On the golden ripeness pour'd a deepening light. Pleasant at noon beside the vocal brook To lay me down, and watch the the floating clouds, And shape to Fancy's wild similitudes Their ever-varying forms; and oh, how sweet, To drive my flock at evening ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... just then, and he accepted the offer. I warned him of his one peculiarity. The morning of the hunt we rode out together. It was in the direction of Ballynegarde. There was often a trap to be met in the way of a sunken ditch over-grown with gorse, and unless one knew the lay of it a horse was apt to rush through instead of jumping and find himself and the rider at the bottom of the sunken ditch. I had forgotten to warn the rider of Mick Molloy of this fact. We had a fine seven-mile run in the morning ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... the river banks, now nearly level with the water, sloping gently upwards, or steep and at times almost precipitous, is much marked as we proceed on our way up the stream. After passing some gardens, and a steep bank overgrown with gorse, the sluggish stream quickens its pace, and we soon reach an abrupt turn where the current is met by an unyielding wall of lias. Under the bare limestone the water is deep and rushes swiftly, but above, the bank is covered with tangled ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... the breezy hill-side which overhung the sea; away through the furze, the gorse, and the large brake-ferns; away until they had left the pretty villa far behind them, and found themselves in the small sheltered bay where Mr. Smith's boat, the White ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... carefully one on the top of the other in Tom's arms, then sat down on the mossy root of a tree, and watched him as he crossed the common towards the little brown hut among the gorse bushes. ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... by "lady-smocks, all silver white," with the course of the little stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river of shining kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay tracts of brown heath and brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and miles along the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly brake, and here and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure, purpling ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing, But then, the very thought of such fanatical cruelty heightened my old hatred of his dingy old antiquarian fussiness and my longing for the youth and liberty that called to me from the sea. Outside was strong sunlight with a wind; and a yellow head of some broom or gorse in the garden rapped against the glass of the window. I thought of that living and growing gold calling to me from all the heaths of the world—and then of that dead, dull gold and bronze and brass of my brother's growing dustier and dustier as life went by. Nature and the Carstairs ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... long exhibition of vanity, the women waving their handkerchiefs, the men putting on all sorts of airs, jetting like gamecocks. When we got up to the top of the hill, I saw the old lame puppet-man, sitting on the edge of the wild, unenclosed, gorse-covered common-land which stretches away towards the town of Axminster. He was watching us with deep interest. Our men were spreading out into line upon this common. The horse was ranging on, bobbing about, far ahead. The foot were looking about eagerly as they ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... wreath of smoke issuing from a small clay-built hut thatched with furze, built against the steepest part of the hill, of which it seemed a mere excrescence, about half way down the declivity; and, on calling aloud, two children, who had been picking up dry stumps of heath and gorse, and collecting them in a heap for fuel at the door of their hovel, first carefully deposited their little load, and then came running to know ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... vegetables cooking led us eventually to the little mound amidst the gorse where our aristocratic visitors were temporarily residing. There was some difficulty at first in attracting their attention, but this I overcame by tying our visiting-cards to a piece of string and dangling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... of hills. Their crest was only the abrupt termination of a vast and enclosed tableland, abounding in all the qualities of the ancient chase: turf and trees, a wilderness of underwood, and a vast spread of gorse and fern. The deer, that abounded, lived here in a world as savage as themselves: trooping down in the evening to the river. Some of them, indeed, were ever in sight of those who were in the valley, and you might often observe various groups clustered on the green heights above ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... an epitome of the results of this awakening. Anything more desolate than its aspect when it was first established it would be impossible to imagine. Long 'lines' of huts, planted in a wilderness of gorse, heather, and sand, dimly lit, and miserably appointed; 'women that were sinners' prowling about the outskirts, and gradually taking possession of much of the hastily-constructed town, with the usual accompaniment of low public-houses and music-halls—such, to a great extent, ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... seized the professional opportunity, lifted her bodily off the slope, and lowered her to the beach. "There, now, if you will sit absolutely still . . . for one minute. I command you! Yes, as I suspected—a gorse-prickle!" ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... irreproachable antecedents from Tunbridge Wells. Respectability is a plant which in that fashionable watering-place has been so assiduously cultivated that it flourishes now in the open air; like the yellow gorse, it is found in every corner, thriving hardily under the most unfavourable conditions; and the keener the wind, the harder the frost, the more proudly does it hold its head. But on this particular day the ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... high [20] upon the down, Alone amid a prospect wide; There's neither Johnny nor his Horse Among the fern or in the gorse; 220 There's neither Doctor ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... sound of a horn was heard, and at a little distance he saw the beautiful Yolande de Foix, radiant and charming as ever, riding slowly by—apparently returning from the chase. He followed her with his eyes admiringly, but felt no regret as her figure was lost to view amid the thick gorse bushes bordering the road down which she was going, and turned with ever increasing love and adoration to the sweet being at his side. The memory of the fair Yolande, whom he had once worshipped in a vague, boyish way, faded ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... their abodes in the earth.] Wylde worme[gh] to her won wrye[gh] i{n} e ere, [Sidenote: The fox goes to the woods.] e fox & e folmarde to e fryth wynde[gh], [Sidenote: Harts to the heath, and hares to the gorse.] Hertt{es} to hy[gh]e hee, hare[gh] to gorste[gh], [Sidenote: Lions and leopards go to the lakes.] & lyou{n}e[gh] & lebarde[gh] to e lake ryft{es}, 536 [Sidenote: Eagles and hawks to the high rocks.] Herne[gh] & haueke[gh] to e hy[gh]e roche[gh]; e hole-foted fowle to e ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... broke the monotony of the moorland. Here was the better Limousin landscape—every knoll and mamelon covered with heather and other moor-plants, woods and meadows in the dells and dips. The numerous clumps of silver birches, and the gorse arrayed in its new flowers of bright gold, added to the charm of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... actual murder took place before the dead man was dragged behind that rock," answered the detective. "As far as we can reckon from the disturbance of these pine needles, the murderer must have sprung on Kitely from behind that clump of gorse—there where it's grown to such a height—and then dragged him here, away from that bit of a path. No—we've found nothing. But I suppose you've heard of the ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... fox-hunters of the Roman Campagna. He still deserves it. In twenty strides he left me behind. I saw him jumping over the heather, knocking off with his cane the young shoots on the oaks, or turning his head to look at me as I struggled after, torn by brambles and pricked by gorse. A startled pheasant brought him to a halt. The bird rose under his feet and soared ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... gorse-bordered road, steep and rough, I came upon two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, with rifles, sword-bayonets, and batons. We had a chat, and I examined their short Sniders while they admired the humble Winchester I carried for ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... lies a sea of fern, gone a russet-brown from decay, in which are isles of dark green gorse, and little trees with little scarlet and orange and lemon-colored leaflets fluttering down, and running after each other on the bright grass, under the brisk west wind which makes the willows rustle, and turn up the whites ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... money!" he cried wildly. "If I do a burglary! Look here, Marcella, the only thing is for me to get boozed and borrow it! If I had half a dozen whiskies I'd go to the Governor-General himself and get it out of him! But if I were not boozed I couldn't ask—ask even for the job of gorse-grubbing or road sweeping. I haven't even the courage to ask you for a kiss if I'm ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... are very healthy; requiring only the occasional shelter of a shed in very rough weather. In spring, summer, and autumn, they graze like sheep; and, during winter, have been fed with hay, and refuse vegetables from the garden; but their favourite food is gorse (U'lex europae'a), which they devour eagerly, without being annoyed by its prickles. They damage young plantations, but not more than other goats or deer will do. They breed very early: three of Mr. Tower's goats this year produced kids before they were themselves a twelvemonth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... now so disguised by his leather accoutrements, and by the goggles he was obliged to wear over his eyes, that his closest friend might have passed by without recognizing him. He was a brown spot in the midst of an expanse of olive-green gorse, and nothing more. Though frequently depressed in spirit when not actually at work, owing to thoughts of Eustacia's position and his mother's estrangement, when in the full swing of labour he was ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the sun flashed on the carriages and on the quivering leaves in the park. It was a joyous morning, and men and women looked at the sky and smiled as they went about their work or their pleasure, and the wind blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse. But somehow or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there seemed to be no sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... singular it is that there should be absolutely no trees on these islands, although Tierra del Fuego is covered by one large forest. The largest bush in the island (belonging to the family of Compositae) is scarcely so tall as our gorse. The best fuel is afforded by a green little bush about the size of common heath, which has the useful property of burning while fresh and green. It was very surprising to see the Gauchos, in the midst of rain and everything soaking wet, with nothing more than a tinder-box and a piece ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a long row of them on the right, forming a shelter against the winds, as if the wood had thrown a protecting arm around the cottage, and wanted to draw it closer to its warm bosom. The country was of an undulating character, divided into fields by long rows of gorse hedges, all golden with blossoms, which gave out a faint, peach-like odour. Some of these meadows were yellow with corn—some a dull red with sorrel, others left in their natural condition of bright green grass—while here and there stood up, white and ghost- like, the stumps ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the alternative of following Jean on his own responsibility, but the Stonykirker had far too great a respect for his skin to search a valley bristling like a thousand hedgehogs with all manner of thorn and gorse bushes, waved over with broom and darkened with undergrowth, any single clump of which might conceal half-a-dozen rifles, each with the eye of a sharpshooter behind it—a mere spark in the sheltering dusk, but quite enough to frighten ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... point, she entered the mouth of a narrow inlet which afforded shelter to a few boats and small craft. It was a wild, almost savage-looking place, though extremely picturesque. On either side were rugged and broken cliffs, in some parts rising sheer out of the water to the gorse-covered downs above, in others broken in terraces and ledges, affording space for a few fishermen's cottages and huts, which were seen perched here and there, looking down on the tranquil ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... unusually long march, I flopped down and went to sleep in an overgrown ditch, surrounded by gorse and broom. The sun was just rising when I awoke with the idea that I was lying on a bed of pins. The idea grew to a firm conviction when an involuntary movement of mine considerably increased my discomfort. As I lay trying to solve ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... cross and a few field flowers. They hammered the cross deep into the mud between Sir Thorald and little Alixe. Later still Jack returned with a spade and worked for an hour, shaping the twin mounds. Before he finished he saw Lorraine climbing the hill. Two wreaths of yellow gorse hung from one arm, interlaced like thorn crowns; and when she came up, Jack, leaning silently on his spade, saw that her fair hands were cut and bleeding from plaiting ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... says I am getting on first-rate. And then think of our study, Miss Ross!' and here Kester's face kindled with enthusiasm. 'How I shall dream of those moors, and of those great patches of purple heather, and the bees humming over the thyme, and the golden gorse, and the bracken! No wonder Cyril wants ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... awake very often, she might hear James chain the front door, trumpet through his nose on the mat, and slowly mount the stairs to his own room. She thought resolutely of Lancelot pursuing his panting quests at school, or of her garden in mid-June, or of the gorse afire on Wycross ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... It seemed, on the contrary, to have a tonic and exhilarating effect on this Patchinar pony. Before we could reach him (a work of considerable difficulty and some risk) he had risen to his feet, given himself a good shake, and was nibbling away at a bit of gorse that peeped through the snow on which he had fallen. A deep cut on the shoulder was his only injury, and, curiously enough, our portmanteaus, with the exception of a broken strap, were unharmed. There was, luckily, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... sun warming itself, or covering itself with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and twisted itself into wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day, perhaps, when it was purple and yellow with gorse and heather and broom, and the honey scents drew bees and butterflies and birds. But soon I saw and was drawn by ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... head, for which Turgeneff and Tolstoy are famous. Dostoevsky even ridicules Turgeneff for his feminine portraits, in "Devils," under the character of the writer Karmazinoff, with his passion for depicting kisses not as they take place with all mankind, but with gorse or some such weed growing round about, which one must look up in a botany, while the sky must not fail to be of a purplish hue, which, of course, no mortal ever beheld, and the tree under which the interesting pair is seated must infallibly be ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... servant's toil revered; And gladly on that coast Erin to Christ Paid her firstfruits. Three days he preached his Lord: The fourth embarking, cape succeeding cape They passed, and heard the lowing herds remote In hollow glens, and smelt the balmy breath Of gorse on golden hillsides; till at eve, The Imber Domnand reached, on silver sands Grated their keel. Around them flocked at dawn Warriors with hunters mixed, and shepherd youths And maids with lips as red as mountain berries And eyes like sloes, or keener eyes, dark-fringed And gleaming like the ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... leap, Borne, as though on viewless wings, Down bosky glade and ferny steep To quench their thirst at silver springs, From Cruachan palace through gorse and heather, Raced the Royal Maids together. Since childhood thus the twain had rushed Each morn to Clebach's fountain-cell Ere earliest dawn the East had flushed To bathe them in its well: Each morn with joy their young hearts tingled; Each morn as, conquering ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... learn, practically on the spot. We were chatting about the few Indians who exist to this day on Long Island (rather mixed up with negroes) and admiring the gorgeous golden dunes, and gorgeouser goldener gorse when suddenly bump! bump! The moderately bad road became immoderately awful. At this spot some disillusioned motorist had revengefully printed on a proud sign-post the classic words: "Damn Bad Road." We were forced to believe him. And at that instant, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... was obtained that the horsemen had ridden along the Harrow Road. With a faint view of overtaking them the pursuer urged his steed to a quicker pace. Arrived at Westbourne-Green—then nothing more than a common covered with gorse and furzebushes, and boasting only a couple of cottages and an alehouse—he perceived through the hedges the objects of his search slowly ascending the gentle hill ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... here; but I have seen The gay gorse bushes in their flowering time; I know the scent of bean-fields; I have heard The satisfying murmur ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... the Daisy William Wordsworth To Daisies Francis Thompson To the Dandelion James Russell Lowell Dandelion Annie Rankin Annan The Dandelions Helen Gray Cone To the Fringed Gentian William Cullen Bryant Goldenrod Elaine Goodale Eastman Lessons from the Gorse Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Voice of The Grass Sarah Roberts Boyle A Song the Grass Sings Charles G. Blanden The Wild Honeysuckle Philip Freneau The Ivy Green Charles Dickens Yellow Jessamine Constance ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... revealed to me one day when, with Deborah's master, his lumbering sons and comely daughters, and my chum Fred Harcourt, an artist from "across the water," we were cutting some early grass in May, just before the full bloom of the gorse had begun to fade from the hillsides and from the tops of the hedges where it had made borders of gold for the green of the fields all ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... comprehending, I stepped back from the pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod about the excavation. There was ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... far from the race-course), but we continued along it instead for some distance, finally turning off down a narrow lane without any sign of a hedge. After following this for a length of time, we took the road at right angles leading between fields covered with gorse, and later, descending one or two steep hills with trees on either side, we reascended and entered the ancient town of Lescar, only to dip under the tottering walls of the ancient castle—a few minutes later—and mount again under a narrow ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... He took up the novel, but its enchantment was gone, and it appeared to him in its tawdry, original vulgarity. He got on a horse and rode towards the downs, and went up the steep ascents at a gallop. He stood amid the gorse at the top and viewed the great girdle of blue encircling sea, and the long string of coast towns lying below him, and far away. Lunch was on the table when he returned. After lunch, harassed by an obsession of architectural plans, he went out to sketch. But it rained, and resisting ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... it had been February to Guida because the yellow Lenten lilies grew on all the sheltered cotils; March because the periwinkle and the lords-and-ladies came; May when the cliffs were a blaze of golden gorse and the perfume thereof made all the land sweet as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... each other how bitterly cold it was, he would be thinking how snug and warm it was down there, and how nice it would be to turn a certain corner on the road back, and slip at once out of the freezing wind that had it all its own way up among the withered gorse and heather of the wide expanse where he pursued his ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... walking was an achievement with him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one night,—now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,—feats which do not accompany an ailing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... demonstrate that it can in its way be quite as useful as its larger cousins. A Cocker can very often go and work as well where a larger Spaniel cannot even creep, and for working really thick hedgerows or gorse has no superior. There seems to be every prospect of a brilliant future, and increased popularity for this ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... these memories, we took the carriage road to Pisa, over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro through those last days. It passes an immense forest of stone-pines—aisles and avenues; undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, gorse, and myrtle; the crowded cyclamens, the solemn silence of the trees; the winds hushed in their velvet roof ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Westmoreland dales, the month was rainier than elsewhere, but if possible, milder. Yellow buds were already foolishly breaking on the gorse, and weak primroses, as though afraid to venture, and yet venturing, were to be found in the depths of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I think, a great success. Mrs. Stuart was happy, because she had for once induced Stuart to put away his papers and allow himself a holiday; it was Miss Bretherton's first sight of the genuine English country, and she was like a child among the gorse and the hawthorns, while Wallace and I amused our manly selves extremely well in befriending the most beautiful woman in the British Isles, in drawing her out and watching her strong naive impressions ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wool of sheep, the coat of cattle, or the nether integuments of wayfaring humanity, and can't be got rid of without some little difficulty. Most of them, you will find on examination, belonged to confirmed hedgerow or woodside plants: they grow among bushes or low scrub, and thickets of gorse or bramble. Now, to such plants as these, it is obviously useful to have adhesive fruits and seeds: for when sheep or other animals get them caught in their coats, they carry them away to other bushy spots, and there, to get rid of the annoyance caused by the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... blackthorn, some of the shorter branches have developed into stout, sharp spines, which tear the skin of would-be assailants. In the brambles, the hairs on the stem have thickened into pointed prickles, which answer the same purpose as the spines of their neighbors. In the thistles, the gorse and the holly, once more, it is the angles of the leaves themselves, which have grown into needle-like points so as to deter animals from browsing upon them. But the nettle probably carries the same tendency to the furthest possible limit. Not content with mere defense, it is to some extent actively ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the prospect on every side so free and unbounded! Then it was all covered with gay flowers, many of which I had never observed before. There were at least three kinds of heath (I have got them In my handkerchief here), and gorse, and broom, and bellflower, and many others of all colors, that I will beg you presently to tell me the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Elm Lodge and West Lodge, in big gardens sliced off the common. The houses are fancifully painted, and half hidden behind a privet hedge and a row of elms. The common to the south is bare of bushes, but to the north there are still big clumps of gorse and brambles, with many straggling trees between. Putney Cemetery is on the common, and further west that of Barnes is seen. At the beginning of the Mill Hill Road is an old cottage hidden behind closely-trimmed trees and a high hedge, the residence of the cattle gate-keeper, ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fire of the Boers as like the crackle of a piece of gorse in a blazing fire. Colour-Sergeant Palmer, who so greatly distinguished himself both during and after the charge, said the air was hot with bullets. His rifle was shot in two at the lower band as he was taking aim, splinters grazing his face and hands. Half the survivors ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... the flowing contours of the Downs, man's hands had made no mark upon it; and the thin veil of vegetation which overspread the broad-backed heights and the shelving sides of the coombs was unaffected by his industry. The native grasses and weeds, the scattered patches of gorse, contended with one another for possession of the scanty surface soil; they fought against the droughts of summer, the frosts of winter, and the furious gales, which swept with unbroken force, now from the Atlantic, and now from the North Sea, at all times of the year; they ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one,— The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern; The gossamers wander at their own will. At heavier steps than ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... the travellers had reached the dreary waste called by the inhabitants Hammerton Heath. At some seasons of the year it was golden with gorse or purple with ling, but in this drear winter season it was bare and colourless, and utterly desolate. The outline of dark forests could be seen all around on the horizon; but the road led over the exposed ground, where not a tree broke the monotony of the way. Cuthbert was ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... now she's high upon the down, Alone amid a prospect wide; There's neither Johnny nor his horse, Among the fern or in the gorse; There's neither ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... lonely moor, where the heather and gorse bloomed so bravely, so lonely that even along the road which skirted it the number of those who passed by in a day could be counted on the fingers of your hand; and as for the moor itself, it seldom had any visitors but the cows from the little farm which nestled away ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... built to-day, a proud and perfect day, And I have built the towers of cliffs upon the sands. The foxgloves and the gorse I planted on my way. The thyme, the velvet thyme, grew up beneath my hands, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... and spent the miserable hours in watching the Great Bear creeping round the pole, and in trying to feed the dying embers with damp fuel. And there it was that I discovered what I now make known to the world, namely, that gorse and holly will burn of themselves, even while they are yet rooted in the ground. So we sat sleepless and exhausted, and not without misgiving, for we had meant that night before camping to be right under the foot of the last cliffs, and we were ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... a sky of plain dark blue, making a path of swaying gold toward the beach, where we could see the water curl upon the sands like suds. A little back was a steep rise of granite rocks, with gorse and heather growing on the sides, at the bottom of which some gipsies, or free-traders, had built a great fire, and we heard them singing a drunken catch in chorus, and saw them whirling round and round ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... At Barnes the river is muddy, dingy, and tidal; it has neither the graceful charm of the Thames above the locks nor the romance of the crowded stream below London Bridge. In the afternoon he walked about the common; and that is gray and dingy too; it is neither country nor town; the gorse is stunted; and all about is the litter of civilisation. He went to a play every Saturday night and stood cheerfully for an hour or more at the gallery-door. It was not worth while to go back to Barnes for the interval between the closing of the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... out into the world to try their luck, and each took his own way; but when the youngest had gorse a ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... were soon left behind, and the pathway led ever upwards, first through a tangle of heather and bilberry and gorse; then, higher still, over short, fine, slippery tracts of grass. They were reaching the upper region of the fell, where the hard rock cropped out into great splintered crags, weathered by countless winter storms, and where no bushes or softer herbage ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... information, and he related how, on a ramble with a friend last spring (it was Basil Morton), he had come upon this still little town between the mountains and the shore, amid a country shining with yellow gorse, hills clothed with larch, heathery moorland, ferny lanes, and wild heights where the wind ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... got a charge of powder to spare?' said Elzevir, showing his pistol. 'I want to get a rabbit in the gorse for supper, and have dropped my flask. Maybe you've seen a flask in walking ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... objection, and, turning, they picked their way along the field, got over the gate and down through the tangle of gorse and brier to the path which ran along the Lansallos side of the cliff. Every step of the way was familiar to Adam, and he so guided Eve as to bring her down to a rough bit of rock which projected out and formed a seat on a little flat of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... great red fields of sarasson, hedged by long banks of earth, which were masses of golden gorse and bronzed and crimson ferns. The sun shone, the clover-scented air was full of the joyous buzzing of bees ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Well, as I say, I was on the moor and saw the carriage coming along. I didn't know that those Princesses were in it till one of them—the younger—got out and stood by the roadside. I was close at hand, and hidden by a gorse bush. She whistled. I tell you, Ware, she whistled. What manners these foreigners have! Three times she whistled. Then some one rose from behind another bush and walked quickly to the carriage. It was Anne. ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... built in the midst of Great Common, some of the wildness must necessarily be lost. A finer site could not have been found. Above Great Common is a superb open space nearly six hundred feet high, with gorse bushes advantageously placed to give shelter while one studies the Fernhurst valley, the Haslemere heights and, blue in the distance, the North Downs. Sussex has nothing wilder or richer than the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... now, but it was all a strange, undiscovered land; they were in the heart of a wilderness of hills and valleys that he had never looked upon, and they were going down a wild, steep hillside, where the narrow path wound in and out amidst gorse and towering bracken, and the sun gleaming out for a moment, there was a gleam of white water far below in a narrow valley, where a little brook poured and rippled from stone to stone. They went down the hill, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... form a long, broad tableland, many miles across. This tableland is not so flat that all of it can be seen at once, but here and there are little dells, shaped like deep basins, which the country folk call hollows; and every now and then there is a rock or hillock covered with yellow gorse bushes, from the top of which can be seen the wide, outspread plains, where hundreds of sheep and ponies are feeding, which belong to the farmers and cottagers dwelling in the valley below. Besides the chief valley, which divides the mountains into two groups, and which is broad ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... umbrageous, intermingled with elms, ashes, and horse-chestnuts, and overshadowing brakes, covered with maples, alders, and hazels. The other spaces among the trees were enlivened by patches of yellow flowering and odorous gorse. Mixed with the warblings of innumerable feathered songsters were heard the cheering notes of the cuckoo; and the newly-arrived swallows were seen chasing the flies along the plain, or skimming over the surface of the river. Already had Richard's depression yielded to the exhilarating ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... broad tidal estuary as it neared the sea. The mountains, which rose tier after tier from the level green meadows, had their lower slopes thickly clothed with pines and larches; but where they towered above the level of a thousand feet the forest growth gave way to gorse and bracken, and their jagged summits, bare of all vegetation save a few clumps of coarse grass, showed a splintered, weather-worn outline against the sky. Penllwyd, Penglaslyn, and Glyder Garmon, those lofty peaks like three ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... had clutched by the two hind legs. Poor Tony Tuppett almost shed tears as he looked at the dead animal, and thought what might have been the fate of the pack. "It's him, my lord," he said, "as we run through Littleton gorse Monday after Christmas last, and up to Impington Park where he got away from us in a hollow tree. He's four year old," added Tony, looking at the animal's mouth, "and there warn't a finer dog fox in ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope |
