"Thistle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything quite so ridiculous,' said Miss Delacour; 'but as those silly children are going to dress, I suppose I had better put on the gown which I call my thistle gown. The thistle is the emblem of Scotland. I suppose you know ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... devices have been invented for milking, some of which have been tested bacteriologically as to their efficiency. Harrison[27] has examined the "Thistle" machine but found a much higher germ content than with hand-drawn milk. The recent introduction of the Burrel-Lawrence-Kennedy machine has led to numerous tests in which very satisfactory results have been obtained. If the rubber parts of the milker are thoroughly ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... moth, blundering against a heavy thistle head, tumbled against Caroline's elbow and fluttered clumsily into her face. She started, blinked, drew a long breath, and woke with a frightened gasp. Before her stretched the pale, curving road; above her the spangled sky throbbed and glittered; the earth, drenched in ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the foolish clown, "kill me the red humblebee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the School-master, "you cannot raise grapes on a thistle farm. Any unbiassed observer looking around this table," he added, "and noting Mr. Whitechoker, a graduate of Yale; the Bibliomaniac, a son of dear old Harvard; the Doctor, an honor man of Williams; our legal friend here, a graduate of Columbia—to say nothing ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... carmine blossoms that are here called Mazza di San Giuseppe, or St Joseph's nosegay, and a very gaudy rank bouquet they make. But in spring-time the oleander can but display long greyish leaves and pods of snowy fluff, which is blown hither and thither like thistle-down on the air; and it is only in flaming summer that these regions are brightened by St Joseph's flower, or by the still more gorgeous masses of the mesembryanthemum, which clambers on all sides over the lava rock and hangs in crimson festoons from tufa ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... and that this might be his method of amusement while unprovided with a partner. The nest of the Hemp-bird is made of cotton, the down of the fern, and other soft materials, woven together with threads and the fibres of bark, and lined with thistle-down, if it be late enough to obtain it, and sometimes with cow's hair. It is commonly placed in the fork of the slender branches of a maple, linden, or poplar, and is fastened to them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... was chosen a privy councillor; and shortly afterwards invested with the Order of the Thistle; and the command of a company of foot bestowed upon him. On the death of William his fortune was rather improved than deteriorated, although he continued to attach himself to the Revolution Party, who, it was generally ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... the Harvester wonderfully attractive in rich, subdued colours with a wealth of markings and eye spots. Many small moths, with transparent wings and noses red as blood, flashed past him hunting pollen. Goldfinches, intent on thistle bloom, wavered through the air trailing mellow, happy notes behind them, and often a humming-bird visited the mullein. On the lake wild life splashed and chattered incessantly, and sometimes the Harvester paused and stood with arms heaped with leaves, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... insignificant designs. If they had a silver design on them it looked under the lights like a scratch in white cotton! At last Mrs. Carr found a black satin which on the right side was timorously and feebly patterned with a meandering rose and thistle. On the wrong side of it was a sheet of silver—just the right steely silver because it was the wrong side! Mrs. Carr then started on another quest for gold that should be as right as that silver. She found it at last in some gold-lace antimacassars at Whiteley's! From these base ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... grow out of veins. In the receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow together, rain and dew are found collected - a certain cure for warts, country people say. Venus' Cup, Bath, or Basin, and Water Thistle, are a few of the teasel's folk names earned by its curious little tank. In it many small insects are drowned, and these are supposed to contribute nourishment to the plant; for Mr. Francis Darwin has noted that protoplasmic filaments ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... plants, the power of increase is even greater and its effects more distinctly visible. Hundreds of square miles of the plains of La Plata are now covered with two or three species of European thistle, often to the exclusion of almost every other plant; but in the native countries of these thistles they occupy, except in cultivated or waste ground, a very subordinate part in the vegetation. Some American ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... princes, either for the defence of religion, or as marks of honour on officers who have distinguished themselves by their valour and address. This dignity being personal, dies with the individual so honoured. The initials of our own orders are:—K.G., Knight of the Garter; K.T., Knight of the Thistle; K.S.P., Knight of St. Patrick; G.C.B., Grand Cross of the Bath; K.C.B., Knight Commander of the Bath; G.C.H., Knight Grand Cross of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order; K.H., Knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order; G.C.M.G., Grand ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... two ounces, one pound, and four pounds. The smaller sizes are the ones most often made with mixed goat and sheep milk. The method of curdling without the usual animal rennet is interesting and unusual. The milk is warmed and curdled with vegetable rennet made from the flowers of a local thistle, or cardoon, which is used in two other Portuguese cheeses—Queijo da Cardiga and Queijo da Serra da Estrella—and probably in many others not known beyond their locale. In France la Caillebotte is distinguished for being clabbered with chardonnette, ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the opportunity of writing a few lines to you, my dear uncle, as I have a chance of sending it ashore by the revenue cutter Thistle, which is lying alongside of us. Between us, we have just captured a rascally smuggling lugger, with a cargo of lace, silk, and spirits. You will, I am sure, be surprised and grieved to hear that among the crew of the lugger was James Walsham. I could hardly believe my eyes, when I saw him in ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... grazing-grounds, and by the brink of the dull-green, serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply such a comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and languid ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... no less than forty grubs an hour, an average exceeding three thousand in the course of a week. Moreover, even in the autumn he does not confine himself to grain, but feeds on various seeds, such as the dandelion, the sow-thistle, and the groundsel; all of which plants are classed as weeds. It has been known, also, to chase and devour the common white butterfly, whose caterpillars make havoc ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... to gather, but pleasant to see—colouring the earth. Presently the gorse flowered, miles of it, and the willow wrens sang plaintively among it. The brightest bird on the Downs was then the stonechat. Perched on a dead thistle, his blackest of black heads, the white streak by his neck, and the brilliance of his colouring contrasted with the yellow gorse around. In the hedges on the northern slopes of the Downs, towards the Weald, or plain, the wayfaring tree grows in large shrubs, blooming ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... jaunty manner of that monarch, walked up the hall and sat down on the throne at its extremity. The peeresses had already taken their seats under the gallery, and the king was followed by the peers, and the knights of the Garter, Bath, Thistle, and St. Patrick, all in their robes. After every one had taken his seat, the Champion, on his horse, both in full armour, rode up the hall, and threw down a gauntlet before the king, while the heralds ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... takes the bloom off the freshness of young writers if they are determined to exhibit the last new words that are in, or out of season. New words have a doubtful position at first. They float here and there like thistle-down, and their future depends upon where they settle. But until they are established and accepted they are out of place for children's use. They are contrary to the perfect manner for children. We ask that their English ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... was now very tranquil and tolerably prosperous. True, almost all the old poppy-heads or thistle-heads, the native nobles and notables, were gone. Those of them who had been taken at Worcester, or had been sent out of Scotland as prisoners about the same time by Monk, were still, for the most part, in durance ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... ant trying to rob a thistle-blow. Now the law o' the field is that none shall have honey who cannot sow for the flower. While a bee probes he gathers the seed-dust in his hairy jacket, an' away he flies, sowing it far an' wide. Now, an ant is in no-wise able to serve a thistle-blow, but he is ever trying to rob her house. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... if it falls as it ripens upon soil already overcrowded with its kind? Hence the vigorous emigration policy to be observed in plants of every name. Hence the fluffy sails set to catch the passing breeze by the dandelion, the thistle and by many more, including the southern plant of snowy wealth whose wings are cotton. With the same intent of seeking new fields are the hooks of the burdock, the unicorn plant, and the bur-parsley ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... and Norman was summoned to help them to trace out the old lines of encampment, ditch, rampart, and gates— happy work on those slopes of fresh turf, embroidered with every minute blossom of the moor—thyme, birdsfoot, eyebright, and dwarf purple thistle, buzzed and hummed over by busy, black-tailed, yellow- banded dumbledores, the breezy wind blowing softly in their faces, and the expanse of country—wooded hill, verdant pasture, amber harvest-field, winding river, smoke-canopied ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... slept like a ton of hay. But the next day!—my Lord alive, you remember the next day, don't you, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' it must have been arsenic as them four had put in his bottle, for I was up in the garret makin' a thistle-down pillow 'n' there come Ed tearin' up on his bicycle to tell me as I must stick in ten dollars more on a margin. 'On a what?' I hollered from the window. 'On a margin,' he hollered from under the porch. Well, really, Mrs. Lathrop, I do believe if he had n't ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... chemically perfect, as indicated by analysis. It is also believed that those weeds, which naturally grow on the most fertile soils, are the ones most easily destroyed. There are exceptions (of which the Thistle is one), but this is given as a ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... occupation to observe Such objects as the waves had tossed ashore— Feather, or leaf, or weed, or withered bough, Each on the other heaped, along the line 15 Of the dry wreck. And, in our vacant mood, Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake, Suddenly halting now—a lifeless stand! 20 And starting off again with freak as sudden; [1] In all its sportive wanderings, all the while, Making report of an invisible breeze That was its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... goldfinch flits Along the thistle-tops, flits and twits Above the hollow wood Where birds swim like fish— Fish that laugh and shriek— To and fro, far below In the pale ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... mountains of British Columbia and Colorado, as well as in the Park. The quantity of hay in them varies from what might fill a peck measure to what would make a huge armful. Among the food plants used, I found many species of grass, thistle, meadow-rue, peavine, heath, and the leaves of several composite plants. I suspect that fuller observations will show that they use every herb not actually poisonous, that grows in the vicinity of their citadel. More than one of these wads of hay had in the middle of it a nest or hollow; ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... we can cultivate— To grace and perfume sweeter than the rose, Or leave neglected while our heart soil grows Rank with that vile and poison thistle, hate. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... suggested. We walked on. "Please," said a little rosy-faced boy, "if you want to find out any thing about old houses, Hill, the rat-catcher, knows them all, as he hunts up the rats and sparrows about; and you have only to go down Thistle Grove, into the Fulham road—straight on. His is a low house, ma'am—his name in the window—you can't pass it, for the birds ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to have been well known in France during the time of Rabelais, who alluding to this mode of procuring the vigour necessary for the amorous conflict, says, "se frotter le cul au panicaut (a species of thistle) vrai ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball, bestride the stick,— (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk! (He's got the scissors snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose! (Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy and breathing music like the south (He really brings my heart into my mouth!) ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a few commonplaces till the others joined them, and then for a while the attention of everybody in the group was held by the squire's sister. She was very small, as thin and light as thistle-down, ill-dressed, and as communicative as a babbling child. The face and all the features were extraordinarily minute, and moreover, blanched and etherealised by age. She had the elfish look of a little withered fairy godmother. And yet through it all it was clear that she was a great lady. There ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very large size, and are of a vast variety of shapes, which probably is effected by art. Upon the dry sand, about the village, grew a plant, that we had never seen in these seas, of the size of a common thistle, and prickly, like that; but bearing a fine flower, almost resembling a white poppy. This, with another small one, were the only uncommon plants, which our short excursion gave us an ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the grain "Dies in the earliest shoots: now scorching rays; "Now floods of rain destroy it: noxious stars "Now harm; now blighting winds: and hungry birds "The scatter'd seed devour: the darnel springs, "The thistle, and the knot-grass thick, which choke "The sprouting wheat, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... quilts—be it enacted, that no person or persons whatsoever shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer to be sold) any feather-bed, bolster, or pillow, except the same be stuffed with dry-pulled feathers, or clean down only, without mixing of scalded feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like to know what 'unlawful or corrupt stuff' is, and whether the corruptness be physical through putridity, or merely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, I think, were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty;—a thistle in late autumn. The best science, without this, is but as the dead timber; it is not the growing tree and forest,—which gives ever-new timber, among other things! Man cannot know either, unless he can worship ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... this point water was more frequently obtained, and what wretched horses they had left showed feeble symptoms of renewed life. At last, when their rations were completely exhausted, they sighted a ship at anchor in Thistle Cove. She proved to be the Mississippi, commanded by Captain Rossitur, the whaler already referred to as the first foreign vessel to enter Port Lincoln; and once more Eyre had to give thanks for relief at a ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill— O the breath of the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... scratch touched at one end (Figs. 18 and 19) by a fine point of highly incandescent glass. For details of this method see p. 46, Fig. 21. Time is occasionally saved by blowing off the ends of the bulbs. The details of this process will be described when the operation of making thistle-headed tubes is ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... as we could we put back the numerous things we had thrown about, and such litter as we could not replace we swept up. But wisps of hair still lay on the tables and the chairs, and feathers floated in the air like thistle-down. We had little time ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... no doubt of that; yet certainly it does her the greatest credit, and it is a great satisfaction to us all to have these things to show. I am sure nobody would ever think that ass was made of crape, and how naturally it seems to be eating the beautiful chenille thistle! I declare, I think the ass is as like an ass ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... white-footed hare had been coursing about. Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush. Down in the bottom the noisy brook was scurrying over its pebbles brightly, or plunging into gloom of its own production; and away at the bend of the valley was seen the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... live luxuriously on the wages of his own dishonour. The foul stain which they had brought on the honour of the Banda Oriental could only be washed away with their blood. Pointing to the advancing troops, he said that when those miserable hirelings were scattered like thistle-down before the wind, the entire country would be with him, and the Banda Oriental, after half a century of degradation, free at last and for ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Dean, by whose command Was form'd this Machiavelian plot, Not leave a thistle on thy land; Then who will own ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Then let me tell thee, Belford, it is impossible so far to hurt the morals of this lady, as thou and thy brother varlets have hurt others of the sex, who now are casting about the town firebrands and double death. Take ye that thistle to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... rose from thistle or bindweed? Man, Speak as our north wind speaks, if harsh and hard ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... examples of these highlanders as tobacconists' signs is that which was placed at the door of a shop in Coventry Street which was opened in 1720 under the sign of "The Highlander, Thistle and Crown." This is said to have been a favourite place of resort of the Jacobites. In his "Nicotine and its Rariora," Mr. A.M. Broadley gives the card, dated 1765, of "William Kebb, at ye Highlander ye corner of Pall Mall, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant, plain holy-thistle. You may think, perchance, that I think you are in love: nay, by'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor, indeed, I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... objects as the waves had toss'd ashore, Feather, or leaf, or weed, or wither'd bough, Each on the other heap'd along the line Of the dry wreck. And in our vacant mood, Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, Which, seeming lifeless half, and half impell'd By some internal feeling, skimm'd along Close to the surface of the lake that lay Asleep in a dead calm, ran closely on Along the dead calm lake, now here, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... crimson velvet, was relieved by ornaments in silver and a radiated oval of white satin with golden rays. The back was fluted in white satin, enriched with the Royal Arms in burnished gold. The State chair was covered with crimson velvet with the Royal Arms and Crown, with the rose, thistle and shamrock tastefully interwoven. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... and the figure of our Lord being in full relief. In the panel to the left are the arms of the See of Connecticut, resting on branches of oak. In the one to the right are the arms of the Bishop of Aberdeen, encircled by branches of the thistle. In the panel opposite that containing the crucifix are the emblems of St. Peter and St. Paul. The remaining four panels are filled with the emblems of the four Evangelists. From this part of the base rises a richly moulded plinth, supporting the ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... pressing up between the boards, the dew shimmering on the weed. Investigate all your surroundings, especially the small, neglected places, and try to have an opinion about what you observe. A busy man, a merchant, noticed, some time ago, a thistle growing by the wayside. He was journeying in the steam-cars at the time; and, although the next stopping-place was somewhat far, he walked back to find the strange flower. The prize he gained was a rare plant, a beautiful thistle ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... that the tidings must have got about that there was a new "lion" in town; for a couple of days after this he was called up by Comings, most popular of novelists, who asked him to have luncheon at the "Thistle" club. And when Thyrsis went, Comings explained that Mrs. Parmley Fatten had read his book, and was anxious to meet him, and requested that he be brought round to tea. The other was tactless enough to let it transpire that ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... nestled amid the green hills Where grew no bramble or thistle,— Mid meadows melodious with music and trills And song that the wild-throated mocking bird spills On the air from his marvelous whistle. No carpets were seen on the broad puncheon floors, No paintings that wealth would reveal; But a ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... Yes, yes, no doubt. Well (brightening), anyhow, we may as well step over to the "Crown and Thistle," and crack a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... wrist, and testing its properties. Gathering in groups, they appeared to consult whether such a peculiar substance could be converted into use, or whether the glove should be drawn by main force, and precipitated to the sow-thistle below. Unlike any large assemblage of men that I have ever seen, they wasted no time in long speeches, but speedily came to a decision; and approaching the thumb of my glove, some thirty or forty stalwart artificers ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... (Leptospermum scoparium) the latter a low shrub with handsome white or pinkish flowers. In some of the ravines two species of tree-ferns of the genus Cyathea grow luxuriantly in the moist clayey soil. Everywhere one sees common English weeds scattered about, especially the sow-thistle and common dock, and a British landshell (Helix cellaria) has even found its way to New Zealand and is to be met with in some ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... quail Mahnoomenekashee, n. a mud-hen Mezhesay, n. a turkey Mesahmaig, n. a whale Mahzhahmagoos, n. trout Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon Meene, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... nuns gladden one woodland lawn, Or sing in one small island. Well—'tis well! Yet, balance lost and measure, nought is well. The Angelic Life more common will become Than life of mortal men." The Saint replied, "No shaft from homicidal yew-tree bow Is thine, but winged of thistle-down! Now hear! Measure is good; but measure's law with scale Changeth; nor doth the part reflect the whole. Each nation hath its gift, and each to all Not equal ministers. If all were eye, Where then ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... trunks—aw, dear! aw, dear! Bareheaded and barefooted in those times, sir; but smart extraordinary, and a terble notion of being dressy, too. Twisting ferns about her lil neck for lace, sticking a mountain thistle, sparkling with dew, on her breast for a diamond, twining a trail of fuchsia round her head for a crown—aw, dear! aw, dear! And now—well, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... heron-plume. From his steed's shoulder, loin, and breast, Silk housings swept the ground, With Scotland's arms, device, and crest, Embroider'd round and round. 140 The double tressure might you see, First by Achaius borne, The thistle and the fleur-de-lis, And gallant unicorn. So bright the King's armorial coat, 145 That scarce the dazzled eye could note, In living colours, blazon'd brave, The Lion, which his title gave; A train, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... their death are like the thistle seed, but at their rising, they will be like the thistle grown; more noisome, offensive, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with the country, young De Clameran was confident of eluding his pursuers. He knew that the next field was a thistle-field, and was separated from the chestnut by ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Shawondasee Breathed into the air his sorrow; And the South-Wind o'er the prairie Wandered warm with sighs of passion, With the sighs of Shawondasee, Till the air seemed full of snow-flakes, Full of thistle-down the prairie, And the maid with hair like sunshine Vanished from his sight forever; Never more did Shawondasee See the maid with ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... Of silver, singing afloat Beneath the night, Like balls of thistle-down Wandering up and down Over the whispering town Seeking where ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... this attenuated frame will be mingled with the dust from which it sprung, and scattered by the winds of heaven, or by the labour of future generations, as chance may dictate, will yield sustenance to the thistle which wars against the fertility of nature, or the grain which is the support of our existence,—to the nightshade with its deadly fruit, or the creeping violet with its sweet perfume. The heart which has throbbed so tumultuously with the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that he might be permitted so to do. Whereunto Pantagruel would not give consent, but commanded him to depart thence speedily and begone as he had told him, and to that effect gave him a boxful of euphorbium, together with some grains of the black chameleon thistle, steeped into aqua vitae, and made up into the condiment of a wet sucket, commanding him to carry it to his king, and to say unto him, that if he were able to eat one ounce of that without drinking after it, he might then be able to resist ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... brook hollow where they grow some late summer twilight at dewfall; and on the still air that rises suddenly to meet you will come a waft of faint, aromatic fragrance, wondrously sweet and evasive, the distillation of that despised thistle bloom. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... victims. The hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory of great men rages, though less openly, in the minds of many. They delight to degrade human life into that dull and barren plain "in which every molehill is a mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree." Great men are as small in their eyes as they are said to be in the eyes of their valets; and there are multitudes who, if ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Belladonna, writes Mr. Conway, is esteemed in Bohemia a favourite plant of the devil, who watches it, but may be drawn from it on Walpurgis Night by letting loose a black hen, after which he will run. Then there is the sow-thistle, which in Russia is said to belong to the devil; and Loki, the evil spirit in northern mythology, is occasionally spoken of as sowing weeds among the good seed; from whence, it has been suggested, originated the popular phrase of "sowing one's wild oats."[5] The German peasantry ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... home it was! After it had been hollowed to a suitable depth, Chick had brought in a tuft of white hair that a rabbit had left among the brambles. Mrs. Chick had found some last year's thistle-down and some this year's poplar cotton, and a horse-hair from the lane. Then Chick had picked up a gay feather that had floated down from a scarlet bird that sang in the tree-tops, and tore off silk from a cocoon. So, bit by bit, they gathered their treasures, until many a woodland and meadow ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... George III., probably feeling that he had done the Duke an injury, always manifested a warm friendship for him, and bestowed upon him various appointments in the royal household. In 1768 he was made a Knight of the Thistle, and in 1801 was invested with the Order of the Garter. He died on the ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... was like a storm; thy sword, a beam of the sky; thy height, a rock on the plain; thine eyes, a furnace of fire. Louder than a storm was thy voice, when thou confoundedst the field. Warriors fell by thy sword, as the thistle by the staff ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... the foe! I shall fall. Raise my mound on the sacred hill. Let my warriors the wish of their chief fulfill; For my fathers sleep in the sacred ground. The Autumn blasts o'er Wakwa's mound Shall chase the hair of the thistle's head, And the bare armed oak o'er the silent dead. When the whirling snows from the north descend, Shall wail and moan in the midnight wind. In the famine of winter the wolf shall prowl, And scratch the snow from the heap of stones, And sit in the gathering ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... for supper, and, oh, what a supper it was! The cook, the moment the wonderful news had reached the villa, had flown to the kitchen, and there she had cooked all their favourite dishes. There were artichokes for Beppina, and stufato for Beppo, and a cake as soft and light as thistle-down for dessert. In the evening they received a telegram of welcome from their dear Babbo in Florence, for the good news had been flashed across the wires to him and all the servants in the Grifoni ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... what she put in his button-hole; a thistle, thorns and all, would have been precious to him if her hands had touched it, and he would have torn his fingers against the prickles with an exquisite ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... thistle is not fair? Of sturdy growth and free determined air, Type of a race, in mental vigour strong, Of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... reproved the thistle; but the thistle maintained his abominable heresy so stoutly that the little vine and the daisy and the violet were quite at a loss to know which of the two to believe,—the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... Rolling Prairie," explained the shepherd, "are the Merry-Go-Round Mountains, set close together and surrounded by deep gulfs, so that no one is able to get past them. Beyond the Merry-Go-Round Mountains it is said the Thistle-Eaters and ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a garden. A small boy forgot to pull it up. His twin sister saw it, but said that thistle-pulling was not her work, so it went to seed. One seed was caught up by a wind and went drifting, drifting, a little balloon of thistledown, until it reached the clouds and travelled westward with them for thousands ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... mile the country had been flayed. The red ribs of it lay open to the sky. The whole flank of the ridge had been torn open—it lies there bleeding, gaping open to the callous skies with scarcely so much as a blade of grass or a thistle to clothe its nakedness—covered with the wreckage of men and of their works as the relics of a shipwreck cover the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... settlement was plentiful, but, from being fed chiefly on sow thistle during the general deficiency of hard food, the animals looked ill, and were as badly tasted. The Pitt, however, took from the island a great quantity of stock; barrow pigs and fowls, pumpkins and other vegetables; for which Captain Manning and his officers ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of prophetical men. The first is that of Jotham: "The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive-tree, Reign thou over us," etc. Judg. 9:8-15. The second is that of Jehoash: "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle." ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Mrs. Henchman's this afternoon proved no exception to the rule. He had evidently made up his mind that the road to the Landslip was not a congenial one. In vain the boy who drove him cheered him onwards, in vain Denys tugged at his bridle, in vain Audrey walked in front holding out an inviting thistle. At length Mrs. Henchman got flurried ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... Gently as thistle-downs are borne away From the dry stem, went Ellen yesterday. I heard her dying utterance; it was: "I'm coming, Teddy! Bless you, dear Miss Linda!" No priest was by, so sudden was her going. When Blount came in, there was no tenderness In his sleek, gluttonous look; although he tried, Behind his ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... "Now, dear Thistle, do not harm these friendly blossoms," said Lily-Bell; "see how kindly they spread their leaves, and offer us their dew. It would be very wrong in you to repay their care with cruelty and pain. You will be tender for ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... is even without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed; with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... princes Welshmen born, and that way ingratiate the inhabitants to their subjection to a prince born in their own country. And for that reason our kings to this day wear a leek (the badge of Wales) on St. David's Day, the patron of this country; as they do the Order of the Thistle on St. Andrew's Day, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... a tremendous adventure, with anthills for mountains and clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path. Tragedy seemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for a remarkable reason—none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in the ear with his wing—and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger on the first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon of his paw, just as that paw was about to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... night the garlands withered. Perfumes were lit in the room, and the smoke of their burning made a violet haze through which quivered the heart-shaped candle flames. The music had a wild ring, and laughter as wild came easily to a man's lips. The English laughed for that their spirits were turned thistle-down, and the Spaniards laughed because a man's foe should not see ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... an hour she would be here. He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn—lady in grey! And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight struck through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Pretty little lettuce-leaves, Pretty pebbles, Red and brown, Pretty floating thistle-down. Pretty baby, Curly head, Standing in a pansy-bed, Pretty clouds All white and curled— O ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... condition to remember it only when he has had a part of the hard work attending that preparation. Again, conditions under which an experiment is successfully performed are often not appreciated when merely stated in words. "To prepare hydrogen gas, pass a thistle tube and a delivery tube through a cork which fit tightly in the neck of a bottle," etc., is simple enough. Let a pupil try with a cork which does not fit tightly and he will never ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... cried Malcolm, angrily, as he interrupted the intruder—a tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, with the bonnet set upon the grizzled head in that sturdy independence—nay, more than independence—rudeness, rough and thorny as his own thistle, which is the characteristic of the Scotch peasant externally, till you get below the surface to the warm, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... raised to the "disproportionately slender columns, when contrasted with the massive shafts beneath them." Here, too, the entire frieze, with its emblematical embellishments of the British crown, surrounded with laurel, and alternate leaves of the rose, the thistle and shamrock, is sure to attract the eye of the spectator: the character and effect of the whole is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... each little window looked with a myriad strange cut panes on the gardens shaped with quaint devices and overrun with weeds. On rusted hinges the doors sung to and fro and were fashioned of planks of immemorial oak with black knots gaping from their sockets. Against it all there beat the thistle-down, about it clambered the ivy or swayed the weeds; tall and straight out of the twisted chimneys arose blue columns of smoke, and blades of grass peeped upward between the huge cobbles of the unmolested street. Between the gardens and the cobbled streets stood hedges higher than a horseman ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... a time, becoming impatient or anxious at the delay of her consort, utters a very long, clear call-note. He is perhaps a quarter of a mile away, watching for a frog beside a pool, or beating over a thistle-bed, but he hears the note and presently responds with one of equal power. Then, perhaps, for half an hour, at intervals of half a minute, the birds answer each other, though the powerful call of the one must interfere with his hunting. At length he returns; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon recognized as her aunt, Marie ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is a choice, or design were vain. There must be courage to reject no less than to gather. A man is at liberty to neglect things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier.... Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor should I understand the taste that would reject the wildness of the thorn and holly, or the child-loving ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... time to fix the boughs. We can't have all these bundles coming down on his reverence's head—— Come on, Babet, it's your turn. What's the good of staring at me like that with your big eyes? Fine rosemary yours is, my word! as yellow as a thistle. You next, La Rousse. Ah, well, that is splendid laurel! You got that out of your ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... "Because it appears to me horrible, to see a poor girl lost and buried in some ugly and selfish man, and become, as they say seriously, the better half of the monster—yes! a fresh and blooming rose to become part of a frightful thistle!—Come, my dear count; confess there is something odious in this conjugal metempsychosis," added Adrienne, with a burst ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is impossible to describe to you half the lies or inventions that daily take place. To-day it is said, and confidently, that the King has nominated four extra Knights of the Thistle—Lauderdale, Cassilis, Melville, and Aboyne. The preparations for the Coronation are going on with infinite energy, but I should think with equal confusion. A grand quarrel between the Lord Great Chamberlain and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... all the other roses In the songs of East and West Of love and war and worshipping, And every shield and crest Of thistle or of lotus Or sacred lily wrought In creeds and psalms and palaces And temples of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... With sweet blue wood-smoke curling thro' the boughs, And just a pigeon's flap to break the silence, And ferns, of course, there's much to make men happy. Well, well, the forest conquers at the last! I saw a thistle in the castle courtyard, A purple thistle breaking thro' the pavement, Yesterday; and it's wonderful how soon Some creepers pick these old grey walls to pieces. These nunneries and these monasteries now, They don't spring up like flowers, so I suppose Old mother Nature ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... perfectly concentrated Meditation em the correlation of the body with the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will come the power ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... growing out of a Plant, or somewhat like the hairs of Animals) as there is to be found amongst small shrubs that compose bushes; but for the most part, they consist of small transparent parts, some of which grow in the shape of small Needles or Bodkins, as on the Thistle, Cowag-ecod and Nettle; others in the form of Cat's claws, as in Cliders, the beards of Barley, the edges of several sorts of Grass and Reeds, &c. in other, as Coltsfoot, Rose-campion, Aps, Poplar, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... hot, heavy and still; though now and then a fitful snatch of a breeze, the mere fragment of some broken gust that seemed to have lost its way, tossed for a moment the white cannach of the bogs, or raised spirally into the air, for a few yards, the light beards of some seeding thistle, and straightway let them down again. Suddenly, however, about noon, a shower broke thick and heavy against the dark sides and gray scalp of the Ward Hill, and came sweeping down the valley. I did what Norna of the Fitful Head had, according to the novelist, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... went to look If plums grew on a thistle, He pricked his fingers very much, Which made ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... barbed wire is down. We lie in the long grass and crush dandelions between our two cheeks till the milk comes out on our faces. We hold each other tight and the wind tip-toes all over us and pelts us with thistle-down. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... quickness of the sap, and according to the forever incalculable effluence of the great dynamic centers of life. The tree of life is a gay kind of tree that is forever dropping its leaves and budding out afresh, quite different ones. If the last lot were thistle leaves, the next lot may be vine. You never can tell with the Tree ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... noiselessly their hoofs beat upon the soft earth and tender mosses. The rains which elsewhere had flooded the lowlands here but enlivened the vernal freshness of the scene. The air was full of floating thistle-down; a cloud of insects dancing in the light, parted to let ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... report to the Lord of the soil the history of our manures; let us treat the ground as seems best, if only we bring sacks to His granary in autumn. Nay, do not I also tickle the palate of my ass with a thistle-bunch, so heartening ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... proper grows something like a thistle, bearing certain heads, that, at a particular stage of their growth, are ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... into silence, and commenced whipping at the thistle tops and dandelions. As they rode on, Mary fancied that the country looked pleasanter and the houses better, than in the region of the poor-house; and when a sudden turn of the road brought into view ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... horse was turned out to graze as best he could on the rocky hillside. He was sick and lame, and he grew thinner every day; for all he could find was a tiny patch of grass or a thistle now and then. The village dogs barked at him and bit at his heels; and naughty boys threw ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... volume, already alluded to, is found in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen in the issue of March 3, 1772. The nature of the review is familiar: Goethe calls the book a thistle which he has found on Yorick's grave. "Alles," he says, "hat es dem guten Yorick geraubt, Speer, Helm und Lanze, nur Schade! inwendig steckt der Herr Prceptor S. zu Magdeburg ... Yorick empfand, und dieser setzt sich hin zu empfinden. Yorick ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... yours, my brave Henry," said the fairy. "The Giant's thistle will obtain for you all that is necessary. The Wolf's staff will transport you where you wish. The Cat's claw will preserve your health and your youth and also that of your dear mother. Adieu, ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... October made quite a creditable fungus record for the League, and specimens of wild flowers were also secured, a belated foxglove or two, a clump of ragwort, some blue harebells, campion, herb-robert, buttercup, yarrow, thistle, and actually a strawberry blossom. The leaders had brought note-books and wrote down each find as reported by the members, taking the specimens for Miss Lever to verify if there were any doubt as to identification. Animal and bird life was not absent. Shy bunnies whisked ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... resumed Miss Linmore, "who has been false to Edith Walter, never can be true to me. I wouldn't have the affection that could turn from one like her. I hold it to be light as the thistle-down. Go! heal the heart you have almost broken, if, perchance, it be not yet too late. As for me, think of me as if we had all our lives been strangers—such, henceforth, we ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere they drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... That weeps about it, cold and grey. And if we seek to travel back 'Tis through a thicket dim and sere, With many a grave beside the track, And many a haunting form of fear. Dead leaves are wet among the moss, With weed and thistle overgrown - A ruined barge within the fosse, A castle built of crumbling stone! The drawbridge drops from rusty chains, There comes no challenge from the hold; No squire, nor dame, nor knight remains, Of all who dwelt ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... "Out-of-Doors" and "Gods and Devils"), and to Robert Loveman, best known for his felicitous "Rain Song," a poem too well known to be quoted here. Any poet who has ever lived might have been proud to have written that poem. It goes as lightly as thistle-down, yet is freighted with thought. Its philosophy is so sublimated and so natural and easy that we are likely to forget that it has any philosophy at all. The fifty or more stanzas of his "Gates of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Turks set light to the dried sage, and thistle and thorn, and soon the whole place was blazing. It was a fearful sight. Many wounded tried to crawl away, dragging their broken arms and legs out of the burning ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... his chair by the fire, a thistle-spud between his knees, his head drooped. Though she had never seen death before, her heart, that missed a beat, told her that he was dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside the door, and the dog licked her hand. When he threw up his nose, she ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... Thomas smiled above his harp, And turned his face to the naked sky, Where, blown before the wastrel wind, The thistle-down she ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... ranges, Ne'er quits her gay and flowery crown;— But, ever joyful, merely changes The primrose for the thistle-down. 'Tis we alone who, waxing old, Look on her with an aspect cold, Dissolve her in our burning tears, Or clothe her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... to Tilsa's immense delight, the hedgehog retired under the bush again, and came out carrying the Flamp compass. 'Is there anything else I can do for you?' he asked. 'Any periwinkle brooms or mallow cheeses this morning? We have a nice stock of thistle-clocks ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... have induced her to believe that she would be staying with Susie this March at Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... scholar. For, between you and me, bel giovane—trust a barber who has shaved the best scholars—friendliness is much such a steed as Ser Benghi's: it will hardly show much alacrity unless it has got the thistle of hatred under its tail. However, the secretary is a man who'll keep his word to you, even to the halving of a fennel-seed; and he is not unlikely to buy some of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Duchess Helena of Russia, he wore no jewel save the diamond- studded star presented to him by the Czar. At the reception given by the "English Colony" to Sir Walter Scott, the great sculptor wore a modest thistle-blossom in his lapel, which caused Lord Elgin to offer odds that if O'Connell should appear in Rome, Thorwaldsen would wear a sprig of shamrock in his hat and say nothing. The thistle caught Sir Walter, and the next day when he came to call ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... his soul! He was a woodman, and could fell and saw With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel? Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home, And reared him at the then Lord Velez' cost. And so the babe grew up a pretty boy, A pretty boy, but most unteachable— And never learnt a prayer, ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... been one of the great fertile valleys of France, dotted with little grey towns with glowing red roofs. For as we looked it seemed to be "that ominous tract, which all agree hides the Dark Tower!" There it all lay; the "ragged thistle stalk," with its head chopped off; "the dock's harsh swart leaves bruised as to balk all hope of greenness." "As for the grass, it grew scantier than hair in leprosy; thin dry leaves pricked the mud, which underneath looked kneaded up with ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... in an archway. He wars a white jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... through windows darkened by dust. The greater part of the place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and tinted by time and weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is an iron railing, much corroded, bearing her national emblem—the thistle. I was weary with wandering, and sat down to rest myself at the monument, revolving in my mind the chequered and disastrous story of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... the yellowbird, or goldfinch. This is one of the last birds to nest, seldom hatching its eggs till late in July. It seems as if a particular kind of food were required to rear its brood, which cannot be had at an earlier date. The seed of the common thistle is apparently its mainstay. There is no prettier sight at this season than a troop of young goldfinches, led by their parents, going from thistle to thistle along the roadside and pulling the ripe heads to pieces for the seed. The plaintive call of the young is one of the ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... face paled. The indecisiveness which never dared to grasp the thistle firmly was troubling him with a new dilemma. Yet something in Marcia Terroll made a call upon him which no other woman had yet made—the call to ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... they came into a great plain, acres and acres of green rag-weed where the wheat had grown, all so flat one thought of an enormous billiard table, and now, where the railroad crossed the country roads, they saw the staunch brown thistle, sometimes the sumach, and always the graceful iron-weed, slender, tall, proud, bowing a purple-turbaned head, or shaking in an agony of fright when it stood too close to the train. The fields, like great, flat emeralds set in new metal, were bordered with golden-rod, and at sight ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Storing himself with gold and precious jewels, he set off, attended only by his faithful De Fistycuff. From place to place he wandered, year after year, till his locks were turned to silvery grey, and his beard became like the down of a thistle. One evening his heart fainting, and his once firm knees trembling, he reached the gate of a monastery in Bohemia. Then he sunk down before even his Squire could ring the bell to summon the monks to his assistance. When ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... lofty blue are blown Light vapors white, like thistle-down, That from their softened silver heaps opaque Scatter delicate flake by flake, Upon the wide loom of the heavens weaving Forms of fancies past believing, And, with fantastic show of mute despair, As for some sweet hope hurt beyond repair, Melt in the ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... some of the herbs; alehoof, which was ground-ivy, or gill-go-by-ground, or haymaids, or twinhoof, or gill-creep-by-ground, and was an herb of Venus, and thus in special use for "passions of the heart," for "amorous cups," which few Puritans dared to meddle with. The blessed thistle, of which one scandalized old writer says, "I suppose the name was put upon it by them that had little holiness themselves." Clary, or clear-eye, or Christ's-eye, which latter name makes the same writer indignantly say, "I could wish from my soul that blasphemy and ignorance were ceased ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the hole again which let in the light, and then escorted the ladies home. But Thumbelina could not sleep that night; so she got out of bed, and plaited a great big blanket of straw, and carried it off, and spread it over the dead bird, and piled upon it thistle-down as soft as cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, so that the poor little thing ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... prevailing taste and fashion, and everything in and out of Nature has had its turn and its day. Then, again, nationality goes for something: the Frenchman is fond of his lis and the Scot of his thistle. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... blows of his hoofs sounding all together on the forest floor. So he flashed by, between me and my tent door, barely swerved aside for my fire, and gave me another beautiful run down the old road, rising and falling light as thistle-down, with the old trees arching over him and brushing his ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Squire," said Mr. Sick, "send it back to Old Marm; tell her you have the misfortin to be a colonist; that if her son would like to be a constable, or a Hogreave, or a thistle-viewer, or sunthin' or another of that kind, you are her man: but she has got the wrong cow by the tail this time. I never hear of a patron, I don't think of a frolic I once had with a cow's tail; and, by hanging on to it like a snappin' turtle, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen, without saying something; he knows not what mischief he does, past computation, scattering words without meaning, to afflict the whole world yet before they cease. For thistle-down flies abroad on all winds and airs of wind.... Ship-loads of fashionable novels, sentimental rhymes, tragedies, farces ... tales by flood and field are swallowed monthly into the bottomless pool; still does the press toil,... and still in torrents rushes on the great army of publications ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... she picked up a little bit of stick, and held it out to the puppy: whereupon the puppy jumped into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight, and rushed at the stick, and made believe to worry it: then Alice dodged behind a great thistle, to keep herself from being run over; and, the moment she appeared on the other side, the puppy made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head over heels in its hurry to get hold of it: then Alice, thinking it was very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... bathe, sith, sithe, both, both, loath, loath, oath, oathes, smith, smithy, breath, of, off, then, yet, liveth or liveth, joth or joth, mouth, mouth, path or path, wrath, wreath, faith or faith, thy, thigh, this, thistle, thou, thousand, thank, they, them, theame, thus, thunder, thine, thin, goal or goal, as afore, motion, crimson, action, Acteon, singed, hanged, changed, shepherd, Shaphat, dishonour, asham'd, bishop, mishap, character, charity, duckherd, blockhead, Dutchess, gather, success, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... that there followed for M. de Cussy an extremely bad quarter of an hour. M. de Cussy, in fact, deserves your sympathy. His self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King's Armies abused him—this man who was Governor of Hispaniola—as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf—that if the terms he had made with the ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... past. The Ignatian meditation on the "Kingdom of Christ" evoked heroic response in an age impregnated with the sentiments of chivalry, but to-day it needs to be adapted to a great extent, and some have vainly hoped to gather grapes from a thistle by substituting a parable drawn from some soul-stirring commercial ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... grey-grow'd thistle rings, An' deaeisy-buds, the lark, in flight, Did zing a-loft, wi' flappen wings, Tho' mwore in heaeren than in zight; The while my bwoys, in playvul me'th, Did run till ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... from Neptune she received, 780 When first her head above the waters heaved; Loose floated o'er her limbs an azure vest, A figured 'scutcheon glitter'd on her breast; There from one parent soil for ever young, The blooming rose and hardy thistle sprung: Around her head an oaken wreath was seen, Inwove with laurels of unfading green. Such was the sculptured prow; from van to rear The artillery frown'd, a black tremendous tier! Embalm'd with orient gum, above the wave 790 The swelling sides a yellow radiance gave. On the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.] |
