"Moat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sea, Whose roads lead everywhere to all; Than thine no deeper moat can be, No stouter fence, no ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... emoluments of the priory of St. Victor. This was a rich little Benedictine monastery just outside the eastern gate of Geneva, on the little knoll now crowned by the observatory, surrounded with walls and moat of its own, independent of the bishop of Geneva in spiritual matters, and in temporal affairs equally independent of the city: in fact, it was a petty sovereignty by itself, and its dozen of hearty, well-provided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... with, the carp themselves were exceedingly old, and had been swimming around in the same moat for hundreds of years. ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... protection at the best. The drawbridge which spanned it was, as we have already seen, drawn up; and the great iron gate connecting with the outside world, carefully barred and bolted. Still, as Singleton looked down, he felt concerned to think how easily a few bold men could swim the moat and assault the place. But he was in ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Angelique were left alone in the waste, and God began to draw the pale coverlet of frost slowly across land and water, and to surround St. Jean with a stubborn moat of ice, the heart of the woman felt some coming danger, and at last broke forth in words of timid warning. When she once had spoken she said no more, but stayed and builded the heaps of earth about the house, and filled every crevice against the inhospitable Spirit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... composure she walked along by the side of this strapping, quackish young woman dressed in the oddest garments known to the art of dress-making. At first they strolled in broad daylight through the park adjoining the city moat. Later Eleanore arranged to have the walks, which were to take place two or three times a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... to a friend the passage in which this charming Bishop writes that, when he slept at his paternal ch[^a]teau, he never allowed the peasants on the domain to perform their usual duty, which was to stay up all night and beat the waters of the ponds, or perhaps of the moat, around the castle, so that the seigneur and his friends might sleep peacefully. My friend was very much bored and could not see that it represented a social point of view, which showed that the Saint was much ahead ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the earliest period of which there is any record. The explanation is simple. The name of the borough supplies the clue. Southwark is really the south-work of London, that is, the southern defence or fortification of the city. The Thames is here a moat of spacious breadth and formidable depth, yet the Romans did not trust to that defence alone, but threw up further obstacles for any enemy approaching the city from the south. It was from that direction assault ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... built on the point between the rivers Alleghany and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne stood. It is five-sided and regular, two of which next the land are of brick; the others stockade. A moat encompasses it." Fort Pitt was invested by the Indians during Pontiac's War (1763). It was fully garrisoned until 1772, when a corporal and a few men were left as care-takers. In October of that year, the property was ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... as of someone fumbling with bolts. Then a door creaked on its hinges and there was some light. When I reached the doorway I caught sight of the figure of Miss Holmes flitting across a hollow garden that was laid out in the bottom of the castle moat which had been drained. The garden, as I had observed when we walked through it on the previous day on our way to the first covert that we shot, was bordered by a shrubbery through which ran paths that led to the back ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... is surrounded on the land-side with a moat, and is entered through some very shabby gateways. The interior of this extensive work presents a busy, bustling scene; its numerous houses being arranged with some degree of regularity in streets and open places. Those ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... as he sat at the supper-table, to which he had been invited in all apparent friendship. The astrologer was at the same time thrown into prison, as being concerned in the treason of his friend. He attempted to escape, and had succeeded in letting himself down from his dungeon-window into a moat, when he was discovered by the sentinels. This being reported to Malatesta, he gave orders for his execution on the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Francis, I fancy, would follow his own eager instincts without much spiritual struggle. And we soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, literal earnest, and counting as acquaintances the most disreputable people he could lay his hands on; fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat; sergeants of the criminal court, and archers of the watch; blackguards who slept at night under the butchers' stalls, and for whom the aforesaid archers peered about carefully with lanterns; Regnier de Montigny, Colin de Cayeux, and their crew, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crosses the bridge and arrives at the steep path which leads to the Chateau, one sees, standing upreared and bold on the moat on which it is built, a formidable wall, crowned with battered machicolations and bedecked with trees and ivy, the luxuriant growth of which covers the grey stones and sways in the wind, like an ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... he gave it, and folded her a last time in his arms. Then, followed by her afflicted women and a great concourse of people, she was led like a lamb to the gates of the city. Here she parted from her companions, the drawbridge was lowered across the deep moat, and alone she passed forth and went towards the lake to meet her destroyer. Now it chanced that just then St. George, in his shining armour, came riding by, and, seeing a fair damsel alone and in tears, he sprang from his horse, and hastened to offer her his knightly service. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... with slots for firing, and it drops straightway into the evil moat, where offal floats and nameless things are thrown. Within, the wall is earth; it slants more gently down, covered with grass and stubbly with cut weeds. Below it in straw lairs the beggars herd, patiently whining, ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... and evenness which render its scenery, in some respects, more monotonous than that of any other Alpine valley. On each side it is bordered by banks of turf, darkened with pine forest, rising at an even slope to a height of about 3000 feet, so that it may best be imagined as a kind of dry moat, which, if cut across, would be of the form typically shown in Fig. 20; the sloping bank on each side being about 3000 feet high, or the moat about three fifths of a mile in vertical depth. Then, on the top of the bank, on each side, and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... is geis for him to depart from the green without giving challenge to single combat.[1] The lad deciphered the writing and put his two arms around the pillar-stone. Just as the pillar-stone was with its ring, he flung it [2]with a cast of his hand[2] into the moat, so that a wave passed over it. "Methinks," spake Ibar, "it is no better now than to be where it was. And we know thou shalt now get on this green the thing thou desirest, even the token of death, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... said there was an old tradition that the Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the moat defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief in the story, for which, indeed, there ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... until it passed by female descent to the Grevilles in the reign of Henry VIII. in 1140 a Benedictine monastery was founded here by Falph Boteler of Oversley, and received the name of the Church of Our Lady of the Isle, owing to its insulation by a moat meeting the river Arrow. The monastery was suppressed among the smaller houses in 1536. Traces of the moat and the foundations are still to be seen in Priory Close. The ancient fairs survived to the end of the 19th century. in 1830 the needle-manufacture employed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... which the Jesuits built on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed. At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by assault. A handful of men could hold it against ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... behaved charmingly to both of them. He had helped each of them to climb about among the ruins, and had taken them both up the steep, dark stairway of one of the towers, and stood with them looking over the turrets into the courtyard and the moat. He knew the history of the castle and could point out the banquet-hall and the chapel and the serving-places, and knew legends ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a huge garrison. In the moat by the gate, as I re-entered, a big drummer and a tiny mannikin-soldier with cymbals were practising how to lead off a marching-past tune. The "Fortune of War" tavern elbows "Horse-Barrack Lane;" a print of "The Siege of Kars" is side ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... was in much the same condition as a hundred years later when visited by Prince Maximilian and by the artist Catlin. It consisted of circular huts, with thatched roofs, on which perched the gaping women and children. Around the village of huts ran a moat or ditch, which was guarded in time of war with the Sioux. Flags flew from the centre poles of each hut; but the flags were the scalps of enemies slain. In the centre of the village was a larger hut. This was the "medicine lodge," ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... traveller looks upon the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed for his shelter in the summer sun, or his fuel in the winter frosts. But in each leaf of these boughs the Creator has made a world; it swarms with innumerable races. Each drop of the water in yon moat is an orb more populous than a kingdom is of men. Everywhere, then, in this immense design, science brings new life to light. Life is the one pervading principle, and even the thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... unawares and likewise find them unarmed; and they send forth their men whom they had divided into five bands. Some kept beside the wood; others came along the river; the third placed themselves in the plain; and the fourth were in a valley; and the fifth battalion spurs along the moat that surrounded a rock, for they thought to swoop down impetuously among the tents. But they have not found a road that they could follow, or a way that was not barred; for the king's men block their way as ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... there's a small town and a very big mill which has been there for ever so long, heaping up millions of dollars. And there's a very big house there that looks like a castle because it's built of gray stone and is up on a hill—it has everything but the moat itself. And an old lady lives there all alone." The lawyer paused, a little frightened at a wild thought that was persistently creeping up over his sensibilities. It must be the lavender tie or the witchery of the flowers ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... spy-glasses, philosophers of want, bent double, with their hands upon their knees, the greasy coats characteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their red beards. The air was full of rich harmonies. Below her, in the moat, a musical society was playing at each corner. Before her eyes was a multi-colored crowd, white blouses, children in blue aprons running around, a game of riding at the ring in progress, wine shops, cake shops, fried fish stalls, and shooting ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... wild-looking girl, twenty years of age, and her two little sisters, Rose and Jeanne, had already bold, fearless eyes, under their unkempt mops of red hair. They all begged during the day on the highway and along the moat, coming back at night, their feet worn out from fatigue in their old shoes fastened with bits of string. Indeed, that very evening Tiennette had been obliged to leave hers among the stones, and had returned wounded and with bleeding ankles. Seated before their door, in the midst ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... cleared away, except within the fort and north of it. Indeed, a considerable number of trees have been felled within the southern part of the enclosure. In the mounds themselves trees are abundant, and there are many in the moat or ditch between. The stumps of those which have been cut down are so many chronological facts, from which the age of the fort may be conjectured with some approach to accuracy. A maple within the enclosure ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... determined upon. The Roundhead infantry were disposed behind as well as in front of the castle, so as to prevent the escape of the besieged; but the camp was at a distance of some four hundred yards. The chains of the drawbridge across the moat were oiled, as were the bolts of the doors, and at three in the morning the gate was opened, and the drawbridge lowered across the moat. A thick layer of sacks was then placed upon the drawbridge. The horses' hoofs ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... them now, Though they sit by the side of the moat, Feet half in the water, there in a row, Long hair in the wind afloat. Therefore, said fair Yoland of the flowers, This is the tune of ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... custom which the elevator-boy (flown with the insolent recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote they took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or broad meshes of the shining foliage ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... its elaborate heating apparatus, and its shattered vases—brings home more clearly than any textbook the real meaning of the Roman Empire, whose citizens lived like this in a foggy island at the uttermost edge of its world. The Norman castle, with moat and drawbridge, gatehouse and bailey and keep, arrow slits instead of windows, is more eloquent than a hundred chronicles of the perils of life in the twelfth century; not thus dwelt the private gentleman in the days of Rome. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... necessary at the entrance to cross a bridge over the moat, and here Patty discovered the reason ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... and soldiers we passed, her hand nestling closely to my arm, past the new series of outworks and barricades, where bronze field-pieces stood shining in the moonlight, then over a dry moat by a flimsy bridge, and entered the sally-port, thronged with officers, all laughing and chatting, alert to watch the guests arriving, and a little bold, too, with their stares and their quizzing-glasses. There is, at times, something almost German in the British lack of delicacy, which ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... oak-roofed hall which was said to date back to the time of King John, a remnant of a former house. There was no electric light or other modern convenience at Yarleys, yet it was a place that everyone went to see because of its exceeding beauty and its historical associations. The moat by which it was surrounded, the grass court within, for it was built on three sides of a square, the mullioned windows, the towered gateway of red brick, the low-panelled rooms hung with the portraits of departed Vernons, the sloping park and the splendid oaks that stood about, singly or in ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... great on board the Susquehanna. Officers and sailors forgot the terrible danger they had just been in—the danger of being crushed and sunk. They only thought of the catastrophe which terminated the journey. Thus, therefore, the moat audacious enterprise of ancient and modern times lost the life of the bold adventurers who had ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... told her that her father was not dead, but that he had been wickedly thrown into a secret prison in Paris before she was born, and had been lost thus for eighteen long years. This prison was the Bastille—a cold, dark building like a castle, with high gray towers, a deep moat and drawbridge, and soldiers and cannon ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... town here, but the great fortress, with its citadel, barracks, machine-shops, gardens, church, and protecting forts, was almost a city in itself. It had a garrison of twenty thousand, and its gigantic concrete walls, covered over with earth and grass, its, moat and barbed wire, looked formidable enough. It had no modern heavy artillery, however, and even if it had, artillery in a fixed, known spot is comparatively helpless against the mobile guns, screened by hills and timber, besiegers can bring ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... more extensive manufacturing quarter of St Pierre, enveloping it on the east and south. The demolition of the ramparts of Old Calais was followed by the construction of a new circle of defences, embracing both the old and new quarters, and strengthened by a deep moat. In the centre of the old town is the Place d'Armes, in which stands the former hotel-de-ville (rebuilt in 1740, restored in 1867), with busts of Eustache de St Pierre, Francis, duke of Guise, and Cardinal Richelieu. The belfry belongs to the 16th and early 17th century. Close by is the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... age, exhaustion, or illness made unable to leave their homes, were drawn up in bands at the city gates, the women armed and dressed as men, the children carrying pistols. Preceded by a body of soldiers, they crossed the moat under Turkish fire. The attack of the vanguard carried everything before it, and a way was cut through the Turkish lines. But at this moment some cry of confusion was mistaken by those who were still on the bridges for an order to retreat. A ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... had been permitted to establish my unsocial study, heralding the advent of majestic folios, and heaping libraries round the unworthy work. Again, pausing from my labour, I look through that castle casement, and beyond that feudal moat, over the broad landscapes which, if I err not, took their name from the proud brother of the Conqueror himself; or when, in those winter nights, the grim old tapestry waved in the dim recesses, I ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that live in the moat of the Chateau de Miramel (in the zone of the armies in France) are of an age and ugliness incredible and of a superlative cynicism. One of them—local tradition pointed to a one-eyed old reprobate with a yellow face—is the richer these hundred years ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... jack-o'-lanterns, will-o'-wisps. Spurtle-blade, the pot-stick. Squatter, to flap. Squattle, to squat; to settle. Stacher, to totter. Staggie, dim. of staig. Staig, a young horse. Stan', stand. Stane, stone. Stan't, stood. Stang, sting. Stank, a moat; a pond. Stap, to stop. Stapple, a stopper. Stark, strong. Starnies, dim. of starn, star. Starns, stars. Startle, to course. Staumrel, half-witted. Staw, a stall. Staw, to surfeit; to sicken. Staw, stole. Stechin, cramming. Steek, a stitch. Steek, to shut; to close. Steek, to shut; to touch, meddle ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... from my occupancy of this house, together with the social cinch it gives me, are worth the money; but I'm hanged if it's worth my while to pay back salaries to every grasping apparition that chooses to rise up out of the moat and dip his or her clammy hand into my surplus. The shoe trade is a blooming big thing, but the profits aren't big enough to divide with ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... he would have needed if his armor had been manufactured in the sixth century—and inserted the red pommel of his spear in the stirrup socket. Then, activating the Yore's lock, he rode across the imaginary drawbridge that spanned the mirage-moat, and set forth into the forest. As the "portcullis" closed behind him, symbolically bringing phase one of Operation Sangraal to a close, ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... residence of the chieftain was commonly a large square battlemented[40] tower, called a keep, or peel; placed on a precipice, or on the banks of a torrent, and, if the ground would permit, surrounded by a moat. In short, the situation of a border house, surrounded by woods, and rendered almost inaccessible by torrents, by rocks, or by morasses, sufficiently indicated the pursuits and apprehensions of its inhabitant.—"Locus ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... clouds are swirling in confusion about the white summit of Demavend as we emerge on the level plain outside the ramparts, and fleecy fugitives are scudding southward in wild haste. Imperfect but ridable donkey-trails follow the dry moat around to the Meshed road, which takes a straight course southeastward from the city and is seen in the distance ahead, leading over a sloping pass, a depression in the Doshan Tepe spur of the Elburz range. The road near the city is now in better condition for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a correct judge, this venerable pile, composed of hard flint-stone, intermixed with brick, would perhaps claim precedence, on the score of antiquity, over most of the castles of the middle ages. A deep moat, now dry pasture land, with a bold acclivity before you, should seem to bid defiance, even in times of old, to the foot and the spear of the invader. There are circular towers at the extremities, and a square citadel ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... surmounted by a gallery loop-holed for musketry, enclosed three buildings, containing quarters for himself and his men, together with a court-yard, from one side of which rose a tall dove-cot, like a belfry. A moat surrounded the whole, and two or three small cannon were planted on salient platforms towards the river. There was a large magazine near at hand, and a part of the adjacent ground was laid out as a garden." (Pioneers of France in the New World, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... cause stronger than it is, it would be damaged, with many moderate thinkers, by the absurdities and violence of its moat zealous advocates. Ward Beecher, the great Abolition apostle, fairly outdoes the earlier eccentricities of Spurgeon; every trick of stage effect—such as the sudden display of a white slave-child—is freely employed in the pulpit of Plymouth Church, and each successful "point" is rewarded by ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a house perched strongly on the western bank of the river, with a moat round, and a drawbridge separating the outer courtyard from the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... was under one King. It was a sad time for the English, for the word of the Northman was the law, and wherever there seemed need for it, a grim, gray castle towered up solidly above the forest, with a great ditch, called a moat, dug around it; and behind that water and those walls of stone lived Normans, ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... by the castle moat the lord of that burg and many of his folk with him; when he had dismounted on the turf he greeted them courteously, and the ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... moat was lowered, because the Lithuanian incursions of old had diminished, and the Knights of the Cross, who carried on war against the King of Poland, were now themselves seeking the friendship of the Prince of Mazowsze. One of the prince's men blew the horn ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... be likened to a fortress surrounded by mighty ramparts. To the south the ramparts are double, the Himalayas and the Trans-Himalaya, and between the two is a moat partly filled with water—the Upper Indus and the Upper Brahmaputra. And Tibet is really a fortress and a defence in the rear of China. It is easily conceivable that a country surrounded by such huge mountain ranges must be ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... windowframes was beginning to look worn, and the brickwork hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Where chain fences had once protected lonely blades of grass, children, mothers and baby carriages held sway now, and the grass was gone. Instead, the building was pretty well surrounded by a moat of sick-looking ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... one," says he, "of entering such a great house as this." Frank grumbled that the west gate was half a mile round. "But I know of a way that's not a hundred yards off," says Mr. Esmond; and leading his kinsman close along the wall, and by the shrubs, which had now grown thick on what had been an old moat about the house, they came to the buttress, at the side of which the little window was, which was Father Holt's private door. Esmond climbed up to this easily, broke a pane that had been mended, and touched the spring inside, and the two ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and, never stopping to gauge its height, sprang down into the moat, landing upon his feet in the bottom of the dry ditch. Faster still, he flew to the second rampart and scaled it as he had done the first, clambering up by means of projecting stones ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the mansions, on the other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke than a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water, a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the car swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... build the castle. Simon Waterford, the vicar, who had christened the child, John de Bois, John Guffe, all sworn witnesses, took their oaths on the Gospel that they saw and handled the child dead. The King's Crowners (Stephen Ganny and William Nottingham) were presently called and went down into the moat. They found the child's body cold and stiff, and white with hoar-frost, stark dead, indeed. While the Crowners, as their office requires, began to write what they had seen, one John Syward, a near neighbour, came down and gently handled the child's body all over, and finding it as dead ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... were crowded with a motley throng up to the very gates of the citadel, where, within the first moat, stand all the yashgis, or residences of the Daimios. Each yashgi is surrounded by a blank wall, loopholed, and with a tower at each of the four corners. Within this outer wall is the court of the retainers, all ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... and Spare kept the merry ones; and I know not how many years passed in this manner, when a great lord, who owned that village, came to dwell near. His castle stood on the moor. It was old and strong, with high towers and a deep moat. All the country as far as one could see from the highest turret belonged to this lord; but he had not been there for twenty years, and would not have come then, only he was ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... Lilburne. It was made yet more touchingly memorable at that time, as you may have heard, by an instance of filial piety. The town was greatly straitened for want of provisions; a youth, whose father was in the garrison, was accustomed nightly to get into the deep dry moat, climb up the glacis, and put provisions through a hole, where the father stood ready to receive them. He was perceived at length; the soldiers fired on him. He was taken prisoner, and sentenced to be hanged in sight of the besieged, in order to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the terraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found an old-world drawbridge—now naturally in disuse—spanning a ditch fed from the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the bridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the same silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to proceed, and I leaned against a buttress ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... other the celebrated bay, generally called the Groyne. It is divided into the old and new town, the latter of which was at one time probably a mere suburb. The old town is a desolate ruinous place, separated from the new by a wide moat. The modern town is a much more agreeable spot, and contains one magnificent street, the Calle Real, where the principal merchants reside. One singular feature of this street is, that it is laid entirely ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... known the story and had told it to her in all its horror, Ortensia would have felt that it must be true, and that only such tragedies as that could happen within such walls. They were so stern, so square, so dark; the towers rose so grimly out of the black waters of the moat! It was of bad augury to look at them, she thought, and she drew back from the window and sat down where she could see only ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... full sense of my privilege that I walked to and fro with Coventry Patmore on that high terrace in his garden at Hastings, or sat in the house watching him smoke cigarette after cigarette, or drove with him into the country, or rowed with him round the moat of Bodiam Castle, with Dykes Campbell in the stern of the boat; always attentive to his words, learning from him all I could, as he talked of the things I most cared for, and of some things for which I cared nothing. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Lady fair? 165 And on his pillows that pale Knight Who seems of marble on a tomb? How comes it here, this chamber bright, Through whose mullion'd windows clear The castle-court all wet with rain, 170 The drawbridge and the moat appear, And then the beach, and, mark'd with spray, The sunken reefs, and far away The unquiet bright Atlantic plain? —What, has some glamour made me sleep, 175 And sent me with my dogs to sweep, By night, with boisterous bugle-peal, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent. Maduron offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a band of armed Protestants ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so-called bricks are not in the least like our bricks, being 6 inches long, 12 inches wide and 11/2 inch thick. The Wall was 20 feet high, with towers and bastions at intervals about 50 feet high. At first there was no moat or ditch, and it will be understood that in order to protect the City from an attack of barbarians—Picts or Scots—it was enough to close the gates and to man the towers. ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... we saw the way and the way's price—marvelled that any could have survived to that stiff, towering redoubt, with its moat of trenches and the trenches ringing its sides; and marvelled most of all that any should have scaled its top, though for a moment only. These trenches held abundant dead, Turks and our own. On the reverse slope I came on rows of the enemy, huddled on their ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... exhibit of its vegetables and fruit, its sides of bacon, its grain in ear, its porridge oats in packets, and its butter and cream in drums and churns; while chiefest of all it showed ramparts of some of the two million sacks of flour it handles annually. The whole of the exhibit was set in a moat of grain ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... that forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line from maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the rings of the portcullises; it is entered by a drawbridge of iron-clamped wood, no longer raised but which could be raised at will. The mayoralty was blamed for having, in 1820, planted poplars along the banks of the moat to shade the promenade. It excused itself on the ground that the long and beautiful esplanade of the fortifications facing the dunes had been converted one hundred years earlier into a mall where the inhabitants took their pleasure ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... their midnight train; Homeliest order in black sky appears, Not less than in the lighted village steads. So do those half-illumed wax clear to share A cry that is our common voice; the note Of fellowship upon a loftier plane, Above embattled castle-wall and moat; And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds. So thou for washing a phantasmal air, For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise, Laughter—the joy of Reason seeing fade Obstruction into Earth's renewing beds, Beneath the stroke of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... some were thrusting me forward, and others upholding me above every ravine, it dawned upon me that they were not witches but what are called the Fairies. Without delay I found myself close to a huge castle, the finest I had ever seen, with a deep moat surrounding it, and here they began discussing my doom. "Let us take him as a gift to the castle," suggested one. "Nay, let us throw the obstinate gallows-bird into the moat, he is not worth showing to our great prince," said another. "Will he say his prayers ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... close at hand; indeed, we must smile, or we could not live): the prelude being something about a lonely castle in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, and a prattling golden-haired babe stretching its arms across a ruined moat in the direction of its absent father. This was in the nature of an absurd prologue, but when she finally came to the Solitary she grew serious; for she made him in the bygone days a sensitive child and a dreamy, impetuous ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wide avenue, planted with rows of majestic oaks, their branches meeting overhead. This extends over one mile; on one side of it is the Governor's Palace and grounds, cut off from vulgar feet by a moat, or walled ditch, and accessible by a small drawbridge from the avenue. Opposite is a ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... obediently and hesitatingly began, 'Oh yes, sir, I beg your pardon. Of course there may be instances,' thereby bringing an intense glow of carnation into Alice's cheeks, while the Canon, ready for the occasion, replied, 'And George Johnson considers himself one of them. He will repair the old moat house, I suppose.' ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was awoke by a terrible invasion—such malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with poudre insecticide ... "mort ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a great scale (1862)—on the outside composed of blocks of peperino and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the present day—supplied the want of natural means of defence. From thence it ran to the Capitoline, the steep declivity of which towards the Campus Martius served as part of the city-wall, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... monster farm, and the southern rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests, are given over to the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon a vast estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial house and stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees; the upper rooms are used as granaries for golden maize; cows, pigs, and horses litter in the spacious yard. Yet the walls of the inner court and of the ancient state-rooms are brilliant with frescos, executed by some good Venetian hand, which represent ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... years; but they beside me saw not the rambling expanse of my leisurely log mansion. They noted not the overhanging gables, the lattices of native wood. To them, yonder lay a castle in a foreign land. Here was moat and wall, then a portcullis, and gratings warded these narrow portals against fire of musketoon. My pet swallows' nest, demure above my door, to them offered the aspect of a culverin's mouth; and, as now, I made my customary approach-call, by which I heralded my return from any excursion ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... a' friends again; deil ane I bear malice at but Westburnflat, and I hae gien him baith a het skin and a cauld ane. I hadna changed three blows of the broadsword wi' him before he lap the window into the castle-moat, and swattered through it like a wild-duck. He's a clever fallow, indeed! maun kilt awa wi' ae bonny lass in the morning, and another at night, less wadna serve him! but if he disna kilt himsell out o' the country, I'se ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... For some moat unaccountable reason, old Peterkin had a bitter prejudice against the boy, on whose account he had once been turned from the Tracy house; and though he had forgiven the Tracys, and would now have voted for Frank for Congressman if he ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... else, with arched doors leading to dark insides. They were all built of tiny stones, such as lay on the beach. Beyond the huts or houses towered the castle, a vast rough structure with towers and arches and buttresses and bastions and glacis and bridges and a great moat all ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... spoke of Gnomes and Elves or Fairies, which roamed about the mountains and forests. These were the earth spirits. They also told of the Undine or water-sprite, which inhabited rivers and streams, of Sylphs which were said to dwell in the mists above moat and moor, as air spirits, but not much was said of the Salamanders, as they are, fire spirits, and therefore not so easily detected, or so readily accessible to the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... shore of Australia, and by most voyagers likewise to that on the western coast of New Caledonia. At one time I thought it convenient thus to restrict the term, but as these reefs are similar in structure, and in position relatively to the land, to those, which, like a wall with a deep moat within, encircle many smaller islands, I have classed them together. The reef, also, on the west coast of New Caledonia, circling round the extremities of the island, is an intermediate form between a small encircling reef and the Australian barrier, which stretches for ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... being washed away by the rain or other water which percolates through the soil. It has long been known to chemists that clay has a tendency to absorb a small proportion of ammonia, and even when brought up from a great depth frequently contains that substance. It is to Mr. Thompson of Moat Hall, however, that we owe the important observation, that arable soils rapidly remove ammonia from solution, and Way, who pursued this investigation, showed that not only ammonia, but potash, and several of the other important elements of the food of plants, are thus ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... l'Imperatrice. What has been done there to render it impregnable to attack will consequently give an idea what has been done everywhere. At the Bois de Boulogne end of the avenue the gate has been closed up by a wall and a moat; behind them there is a redoubt. Between this and the Arc de Triomphe there are three barricades made of masonry and earth, and three ditches. Along the grass on each side of the roadway, the ground has been honey-combed, and in each hole there are ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... commander of the place; next year he captured from the English the fortress of Rennefort, and the Castle of Malicorne; in 1429, he took an active part in the expedition of Joan of Arc for the deliverance of Orleans, and the occupation of Jargeau, and he was with her in the moat, when she was wounded by an arrow under the ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... excitement, a common impulse seized the entire populace, to destroy the Bastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that symbol of royal tyranny. This prison-fortress, with its eight great round towers, and moat eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371, and represented more tragic human experiences than any structure in France. In an hour the doors were burst open, and before the sun went down the heads of the governor and his officials were being carried on pikes through the streets ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... You are, as it were, in a gloomy well. The back of the cornice, with its plaster stained and cracked, confronts your eyes; and with a little imagination you can easily fancy yourself in a dungeon looking into some castle moat. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... principal attraction of the place. It was located in the outskirts just back of the cluster of adobe houses and frame shacks that made up the town. The fort proper consisted of a mud wall about three feet high, inclosing perhaps half an acre of bare clayey soil. Outside the wall was a moat, upward of a foot deep, and inside was a barrack. This barrack—I avoid using the plural purposely—was a wooden shanty that had been whitewashed once, but had practically recovered from it since; and its walls were pierced—for artillery-fire, no doubt—with two windows, to the frames of which a ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... account; but that the all-righteous God had graciously spared him this sorrow; for his father had fallen sick from vexation, and lay a-bed all this time, and it so happened that this very morning about prayer-time the huntsman, in shooting at a wild duck in the moat, had by chance sorely wounded his father's favourite dog, called Packan, which had crept howling to his father's bedside, and had died there; whereupon the old man, who was weak, was so angered that he was presently seized with a fit and gave up ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... uttered; "my heart is trembling now. Indeed, I could think but of one way—the moat. And though the order seems easy enough to give, I fear I should, when the moment came, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... come to it first as the bride of Girolamo Riario, but the townspeople had refused to recognise his authority and had stabbed him to death, throwing his naked, mutilated body into the moat ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... stately house stood in Kittery, Maine, a strongly guarded place with moat and drawbridge (which was raised at night) and a moated grange adjacent where were cattle, sheep, and horses. Here, in lonely dignity, lived Lady Ursula, daughter of the lord of Grondale Abbey, across the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... forfeit that he paid Than undishonored that his flag might float Over the towers of liberty, he made His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat. ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... other side of this gloomy abode is a meadow of that deep, intense emerald hue, which denotes the presence of stagnant water, surrounded by willows at regular distances, and like the garden, separated from the common by a wide, moat-like ditch. That is the parish workhouse. All about it is solid, substantial, useful;—but so dreary! so cold! so dark! There are children in the court, and yet all is silent. I always hurry past that place as if it were a prison. Restraint, sickness, age, extreme poverty, misery, which I have ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Holland with him, but a Bible and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas were amongst them.[6] One of the recommendations of Egmond the Abbey was the free exercise there allowed to the Catholic religion. At Franeker his house was a small chteau, "separated by a moat from the rest of the town, where the mass could be said in safety."[7] And one motive in favour of accepting an invitation to England lay in the alleged leanings of Charles I. to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... leave a note in a certain place. It's her own idea and very pretty. Savors of the good old times when bold knights went riding up to the castle and yelled to the flinty-hearted duke inside to lower the draw-bridge and send out his daughter to be married on the spot or he'd be dropped in the moat with all his armor ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Harwood Grange. It was a mansion built in the time of Elizabeth, with high roof and pointed gables, richly ornamented with the arms of the family, deeply carved in stone, over the principal entrance. It had no moat nor other means of defence having originally been a hunting-lodge. It was also out of the highway, and had thus escaped being turned into a fortress, and suffering the fate of many mansions throughout ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... rose and joining together approached the castle that very night. Having felled giant trees they threw a bridge over the moat, cast firebrands into the interior, and stormed into the castle-yard through gaps ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... last, in 1702, she was released, her health was completely ruined by the privations she had suffered, the bitter cold of winter, and in the warmer weather the poisonous exhalations from the stagnant waters of the moat. When once more she issued into the sweet air of liberty, "My afflicted spirit," she says, "began to breathe and recover itself; but my body was from that time sick and borne down with all sorts of infirmities." Even now, however, she ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the street. It boasted a front yard fenced off from the sidewalk with a rusty railing: a plot of arid earth scantily tufted with grass, suggesting that stage of baldness which finally precedes complete nudity. Behind this, the moat-like area was spanned to the front door by a ragged stoop of brownstone. The four-story facade was of brick whose pristine coat of fair white paint had aged to a dry and flaking crust, lending the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... been busily preparing for their opportunity. The locks of the hall had been tampered with so that their keys were of no avail. The bars by which the gates were barricaded were removed from their accustomed place. Planks had been surreptitiously placed across the moat that the enemy might obtain easy access to the stronghold; and Sir Richard Graeme, with three hundred followers in his train, was waiting for the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... vermilion, as if they from fire Had issu'd." He replied: "Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum'd; as in this nether hell thou seest." We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region comfortless. The walls appear'd As they were fram'd of iron. We had made Wide circuit, ere a place we reach'd, where loud The mariner cried vehement: "Go forth! The' entrance is here!" Upon the gates I spied More than a thousand, who of ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... we reach Offenham Ferry, while a little beyond, set back behind willow trees and plough-land, is the village; and we soon catch sight of the old church tower peering over the bank. At the further extremity of the village, quite near the bank, is the "Court" farm, once protected by a moat fed by the river, and used by the Evesham Abbots as a country retreat. Hither Clement Lichfield, the last Abbot, retired on his resignation, and here he ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... still retained some traces both of its former consequence, and of the perils to which that consequence had exposed it. A broad ditch, overgrown with weeds, indicated the remains of what once had been a moat; and huge rough stones, scattered around it, spoke of the outworks the fortification had anciently possessed, and the stout resistance they had made in "the Parliament Wars" to the sturdy followers of Ireton and Fairfax. The moon, ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are not now as when, of yore, In Tower encircled by a moat, The lion-hearted chieftain wore A corselet for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... feeling comes over us directly we leave the highroad and make our way down the sloped passage and across the drawbridge over the moat, past the massive gates and under the echoing tunnel that leads through the mighty walls. Within we see the parapets on which in bygone days the cannon thundered at the foe. We pass on into the great spaces of the Fort; and in our imagination we can people them with ghosts of the illustrious—or ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other grey avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I wait ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the only person who lived in the new stately dwelling that had been built for the fowls and ducks belonging to the manor house. It stood there where once the old knightly building had stood with its tower, its pointed gables, its moat, and its drawbridge. Close by it was a wilderness of trees and thicket; here the garden had been, and had stretched out to a great lake, which was now moorland. Crows and choughs flew screaming over the old ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... took his friend's arm, and they pressed on. The shadow behind them advanced when they advanced and stopped when they stood still. Through the pleasure garden the pair proceeded with hurried steps, through the gate at the castle moat they entered upon the Willow-bank suburb, then down the deserted little streets of wretched huts. They reached the great Willow-bank meadow without the walls, passing through a gate not far from ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... considerable time. With one of them—the son and heir of the family, I should say—we have just been having a highly interesting and informative chat. Comrade Maloney, who has just left us, acted as interpreter. The father, I am told, is in the dungeon below the castle moat for a brief spell for punching his foreman in the eye. The result? The rent is ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the pinkish-toned building erected by Cuba. Denmark's Pavilion, on the left of the Avenue adjoining the Palace of Fine Arts, is distinctly individual, marked by its towers which reproduce several historic towers in Denmark, and the moat in which frogs croak at night. The interior is arranged to represent the rooms of a gentleman's country home. On the hillside to the south are several avenues about which are grouped others of the Foreign Pavilions—the picturesque ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... individual; that neither being is of itself a whole, a unit, but each requires to be supplemented by the other before its true structural integrity can be achieved. Of this idea, the science of botany furnishes the moat perfect illustration. The stamens on the one hand, and the ovary and pistil on the other, may indeed reside in one blossom, which then exists in a married or reproductive state. But equally well, the stamens or male organs may reside in one plant, and ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... yet I left her even now Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalty Of her delay: yet what if threats are vain? Am I not now within Petrella's moat? Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome? 5 Might I not drag her by the golden hair? Stamp on her? keep her sleepless till her brain Be overworn? Tame her with chains and famine? Less would suffice. Yet so to leave undone What I most seek! No, 'tis ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... swiftly flowing throng was soon dammed; for the spot which afforded refreshment detained the front ranks, which blocked the whole procession as thoroughly as a wall or moat. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... down the old family residence of Stankhouse, or "Tigh Dige," at Gairloch, which stood in a low, marshy, damp situation, surrounded by the moat from which it derived its name, and built the present house on an elevated plateau, surrounded by magnificent woods and towering hills, with a southern front elevation - altogether one of the most beautiful and best sheltered situations ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... wall of rock going up to a huge height before it reached another of the Eagle's Steps; and on the fourth, where the gateway was, the little beck had been made to flow in a deep channel that had been hollowed out to serve as a moat, before it bounded down to swell the larger water-course in the ravine. A temporary bridge had been laid across; the drawbridge was out of order, and part of Hugh's business had been to procure materials for mending its apparatus. Christina ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intersecting streets outside, and its culture showing only the careless, shiftless culture of nature. The streets outside were miracles themselves in that, with their liquid contents, they were streets and not bayous. However, they protected their island chapel almost as well as a six-foot moat could have done. There was a small paved space on the sidewalk that served to the pedestrian as an indication of the spot in the tall, long, broad fence where a gate might be sought. It was a small gate with ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... they trusted to their moat and walls, and the hagger at the bottom of the dry ditch," said the Colonel. "You see there is no eminence from which they could be commanded, and their archers could sweep all ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... afternoon and the sun was near its setting when at last she reached the towered city and found it in all ways delightful but in some surprising. She was prepared for the moat and for the drawbridge across it, but not for the exceeding dirtiness of its water and the dinginess of its barges. She had expected it to be wider and perhaps cleaner, and the castles struck her as being ill-adapted to resist siege and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... But at least I am glad, now that the taxes are in, To learn that in my province there is no discontent. I fear its prosperity is not due to me And was only caused by the year's abundant crops, The papers that lie on my desk are simple and few; My house by the moat is leisurely and still. In the autumn rain the berries fall from the eaves; At the evening bell the birds return to the wood. A broken sunlight quavers over the southern porch Where I lie on ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... eighteen weeks' siege, and its defenders were forced to eat cats and rats to satisfy hunger, and were reduced to only sixty. Beeston Castle was then finally dismantled, and its ruins are now an attraction to the tourist. Lea Hall, an ancient and famous timbered mansion, surrounded by a moat, was situated about six miles from Chester, but the moat alone remains to show where it stood. Here lived Sir Hugh Calveley, one of Froissart's heroes, who was governor of Calais when it was held by the English, and is buried under a sumptuous tomb in the church of the neighboring ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... follow to-day. The island now known as the Cite, which the founders of Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... by a winding ledge of road, which clung to the bare side of the hill like the battlements of some huge castle. Some two hundred feet below, a brawling upland stream stood for the moat, and for the enemy there was on the opposite side of the valley a great green company of trees, settled like a cloud slope upon slope, making all haste to cross the river and ascend the heights where I stood. Some intrepid larches waved green pennons in the very midst of the turbulent water, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... castle, beyond the moat, was a pond. And in the pond lived a whole colony of great green bullfrogs, whose voices were gruffer and grummer than the lowest twanging note on Herve's harp. And as soon as Herve began to sing ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... long way from their destination when they came to a beautiful castle of burnished gold, surrounded by a very deep moat over which was a drawbridge; and on the bridge was a golden portcullis. As soon as they arrived, their leader rang the bell. When the door was opened, the travellers entered, and the hero asked ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac |
