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Turf   /tərf/   Listen
Turf

noun
(pl. turfs, obs. turves)
1.
Surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and grass roots.  Synonyms: greensward, sod, sward.
2.
The territory claimed by a juvenile gang as its own.
3.
Range of jurisdiction or influence.



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"Turf" Quotes from Famous Books



... his beak again through the soft turf, and out came the wriggling worm. He tossed it in the air, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... was a low stone dwelling, white-washed, and heather-roofed, and containing only three rooms. David and Maggie entered the principal one together. Its deal furniture was spotless, its floor cleanly sanded, and a bright turf fire was burning on the brick hearth. Some oars and creels were hung against the wall, and on a pile of nets in the warmest corner, a little laddie belonging to a neighbor's ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... plane-tree, deciduous cypress, bombax, mimosa, caesalpina, hymenaea, and dracaena, appear to me to be the plants which, in different climates, present specimens of the most extraordinary growth. An oak, discovered together with some Gallic helmets in 1809, in the turf pits of the department of the Somme, near the village of Yseux, seven leagues from Abbeville, was about the same size as the dragon-tree of Orotava. According to a memoir by M. Traullee, the trunk of this ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... well did he guard himself. Then Skiolld cut off his hand, and he still kept them off with his other hand for some time, till Sigmund thrust him through. Then he fell dead to earth. They drew over him turf and stones; and Thrain said, "We have won an ill work, and Njal's sons will take this slaying ill when they ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... put up at last. Indeed, he was a bit wilder, if anything, than the boy himself when the flag fell and the whole field swept by in one thunderous rush, with Minnow in the lead and Black Riot far and away behind. Nor did his excitement abate when, as the whole cavalcade swung onwards over the green turf with the yelling thousands waving and shouting about it, Sir Henry Wilding's mare began to lessen that lead, and foot by foot to creep up towards ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... party next visited several of the huts,— which were made of moss, turf, sticks, etcetera, put together in such a confused way, that it was difficult to make out how they had been formed. A hole in the side was the only door to each hut, and a hole in the top was the window and chimney. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne

... flowery turf, at the lady's feet, looking up with dreamy eyes into her sweet face, and then into the leaves ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... grounds; the paths that led to it were wild and tangled; the fairest flower, the foxglove, grew in tall clumps among the foliage of the thickets and shrubberies that divided the lawn into undulating glades of turf all round it; a sheet of water in which there was a rapid current—I am not sure that it was not the river—ran close by, and the whole place used to affect my imagination in the weirdest way, as the habitation ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... atmosphere, which diminishes, I suppose, even that light which actually reaches the planet. But uncultivated ground, except on the mountains above the ordinary range of crops or pastures, scarcely exists in the belt of Equatorial continents; the turf itself, like the herbage or fruit shrubs in the fields, is artificial, consisting of plants developed through long ages into forms utterly unlike the native original by the skill and ingenuity of man. Even the great fruit trees have undergone material change, not only in the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... outside, though, she could not resist one more sly peep in, just to make sure she had not been dreaming. So down went her eye to the finger-hole again, but all she saw was the kitchen, with its sanded floor and bright turf fire, the key-beam with the nets hanging across it, and Betty stitching away as fast as her ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... a little way out upon it, and the turf was so soft, and seemed to push up his foot so, that he must go on, and when he had got a little farther, he heard another grasshopper, and thought he would run and catch him; but the grasshopper, who had heard of his tricks, stopped singing, and hid in a bunch, so ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... these are its denizens; but in pursuing your way, as you emerge suddenly from the huge masses of building in which you have been swallowed up, you see with new surprise an open area of green turf, with beds of flowers, rows of trees, and leafy walks, and shady seats; and hear the fit and natural accompaniments of such a scene—the shrill voices of children, and the silvery laugh of ladies as they stroll through the Temple Gardens. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... grass grew better at mid-winter than at mid-summer, the absence of the burning heat of the last being favourable to its growth. As the season advanced, Mark saw his grass very sensibly increase, not only in surface, but in thickness. There were now spots of some size, where a turf was forming, nature performing all her tasks in that genial climate, in about a fourth of the time it would take to effect the same object in the temperate zone. On examining these places, Mark came to the conclusion that the roots of his grasses acted as cultivators, by working their way into ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... resolution was as ardent as ever, and his heart beat strongly as, after leaving his bicycle at the lodge, he walked up the avenue through the deep gloom beneath the beeches. Near the house, the first notes of "Grudel perche finora" reached him, and he stepped softly on to the turf lest his footsteps on the gravel should rouse the dogs and make them mar the harmony by barking. A rustle made him stop and listen. Then Gertrude's voice ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... tower—stretches a delicious garden, composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that bloomed freely in that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of the few trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour; for to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills above—from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called them. And this was for many years one of the rallying points of the best Scottish society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the host called his Carnival. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... night. The next day (22nd) we landed at eleven and came here, and it rained the whole day. On Saturday we all went over to the camp, where there was a field-day. It is a fine emplacement with beautiful turf. We had two cooling showers. Bertie marched past with his company, and did not look at ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according to custom,—and as he stretched his four hairy paws out comfortably, and blinked his brown eyes at a portly blackbird prodding in the turf for a worm within a stone's throw of him, he was evidently considering whether it would be worth his while, as an epicurean animal, to escort these two men on their usual round on such a warm pleasant morning. For it was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... has not been proved.' The B. and S. C. has won the race. Another victory for Scott's lot! [Footnote: Scott's lot. There was a celebrated trainer of the day, named Scott; and this expression was very familiar in the records of the turf.] The Beckenham project thrown out. [Footnote: West Sussex ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... over the crisp turf of the park one frosty morning in November, when Babbacombe turned quietly to his companion, pointing to the chimneys of a house half-hidden by ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... for quitting this Elysium had arrived. Every now and again they had a glimpse of some one of their party, which had satisfied Katie that they were not lost. At first Clementina was seen tracing with her parasol on the turf the plan of a new dance. Then Ugolina passed by them describing the poetry of the motion of the spheres in a full flow of impassioned eloquence to M. Delabarbe de l'Empereur: 'C'est toujours vrai; ce que mademoiselle ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... a more interesting spot, or one that, from its utter loneliness, so impressed the imagination. The shieling, a rude low-roofed erection of turf and stone, with a door in the centre some five feet in height or so, but with no window, rose on the grassy slope immediately in front of the vast continuous rampart. A slim pillar of smoke ascends from the roof, in the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... meadow, and corn-fields, ripening for harvest, stretched far away, unbroken by hedge or fence. Slight ditches or banks of turf, covered with nests of violets, ferns, and wild flowers of every hue, separated contiguous fields. No other division seemed necessary in the mutual good neighborhood that prevailed among the colonists, whose fashion of agriculture had been brought, with many hardy ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... a racing turf, signifies that you will have pleasure and wealth at your command, but your morals will be questioned ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... th' first year th' child wur born, th' little lad here," touching the turf with his hand, "'Wee Wattie' his mother ca'd him, an' he wur a fine, lightsome little chap. He filled th' whole house wi' music day in an' day out, crowin' an' crowin'—an' cryin' too sometime. But if ever yo're a feyther, Mester, yo'll find out 'at a baby's cry's ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... true. The more, however, I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight of Wades Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end. Agitated in this manner, I reached home. This was in the summer ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... not, then, have much surprised us if George Eliot had insisted that her works should remain the only commemoration of her life. There be some who think that those who have enriched the world with great thoughts and fine creations, might best be content to rest unmarked 'where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,' leaving as little work to the literary executor, except of the purely crematory sort, as did Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, and some others whose names the world will not willingly let die. But this is a stoic's doctrine; the objector ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... her recumbent position on the turf and shook off some blades of short grass from her apron, and waved a brush filled with green paint in ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... returned at one time thirty members, and to have spent eighty thousand pounds upon the maintenance of his political position. He was apt, by his manners, to make friends of the young men of influence. He spent money freely also on the turf, and upon his seat of Winchenden, in Wilts. Queen Anne, on her accession, struck his name with her own hand from the list of Privy Councillors, but he won his way not only to restoration of that rank, but also in December, 1706, at the age ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress all the time. They were all now married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King's Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances; Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman. Of the third generation ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... oily rippling chins of Sir William Harcourt, continuing them long after the time when Sir William could boast the local portliness no more. However, it is certain that the sprig of straw, which really referred only to his pure devotion to the Turf, from 1815 onwards, was first used in 1851, just after the whimsical "Judicious Bottle-Holder" declaration, and, as a matter of fact, added not a little to Palmerston's popularity, as not only representing the Turf, but a Sam Weller-like ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... when I went to the classical seminary ov Firdramore! when I'd bring my sod o' turf undher my arm, and sit down on my shnug boss o' straw, wid my back to the masther and my shins to the fire, and score my sum in Dives's denominations ov the double rule o' three, or play fox and geese wid purty ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... locust tree of lusty growth, plumy of foliage and brilliant of color; and underneath the tree a little fountain shot upward a thin stream, which broke into a diamond shower and fell plashing back into a pool whose rim was outlined by a circle of purple-flowered iris. Around this spread a velvet turf, dotted with dandelions and English daisies. An irregular, winding path inclosed the tiny lawn, and all the space between the path and the narrow stone walk that hugged the four sides of the house was rich with roses. La France and American ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... to patience that when it was forced upon her she felt suffocated by it. She hurried out into the fitful weather, and closed her door behind her. With her shawl hugged closely, she took the path across the fields, a line of dampness in the spongy turf, and, head down, made her way steadily to the little white house where Still Lucy, paralyzed for over thirty years, lay on the sofa, knitting lace. Hetty walked into this kitchen with as little ceremony as she had used in ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... and passed—and only a more hellish hail of bullets beyond it. More men down, more men pushed into the firing line—more death-piping bullets than ever. The air was a sieve of them; they beat on the boulders like a million hammers; they tore the turf like a harrow. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... northward and inland along the downs high over the left bank of the Fowey River; with good turf and heather underfoot, and with the moon behind our right shoulders. She was the harvest moon, now in her last quarter, and from her altitude I guessed it, by west country time, to be well past four of the morning or within an hour of daybreak. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... saffron-flowered, tobacco-like Verbascum, the Arab's Uzn el-Humr ("Donkey's Ear"). Add scattered clusters of date-trees, domineering over clumps of fan-palm; and, lastly, marvellous to relate, a few hundred feet of greensward, of regular turf—a luxury not expected in North-Western Arabia—a paradise for frogs and toads (Bufo vulgaris), grasshoppers, and white pigeons; and you will sympathize with our enjoyment at the Ayn el-Kurr. In such a place ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... I felt the last foot of turf giving under my feet; I looked down and saw the crack there widening; then in a moment I fell, and a cloud of dust and earth rolled after me; then again their mirth rose into thunder-peals of laughter. But through it all I heard Red Harald shout, ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris

... time for another word, for we hurried off down the uneven track, sliding and slipping on the rain-soaked turf. Springing into our saddles we dashed down the gorge, through the grove, and so out on to the road in time to see the troop disappear in the distance, and to meet the solitary ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and looked about him reflective while the gate was again put to and the key again turned in the lock to the same protesting discord. Many years had fallen from the tree of his life since he last trod the turf of Harby. All kinds of queer thoughts came about him, some melancholy, some full of mockery, some malign. He was no longer a poor lad with the world before him to whom the Lord of Harby was little less than the viceregent of God; he was a free man, he was a rich man, he had multiplied ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... large, and costly. They are all surrounded with well-kept gardens and separated from the street by velvet lawns which need scarcely fear comparison with the emerald wonders which centuries of care have wrought from the turf of England. The house of which we have seen one room was one of the best upon this green and park-like thoroughfare. The gentleman who was sitting by the fire was Mr. Arthur Farnham. He was the owner and sole occupant of ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... the clouds were white and dense, but, rippling in places, they disclosed blue stretches of the heaven which, in their masses, they concealed. Southampton began with small houses. One had a tattered garden, where a stone copy of the Medicean Venus stood on a patch of squalid turf near a clothes' line and against an ivy-grown wall. Then the green sands were reached. The sea, like liquid granite, sparkled in the distance. Rows of dull dwellings, shops, public-houses, and hotels came next. The train, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... visiting, by finding nectar in those with only one or two lost. The colour alone of the corolla serves as an approximate guide: thus I watched for some time humble-bees which were visiting exclusively plants of the white-flowered Spiranthes autumnalis, growing on short turf at a considerable distance apart; and these bees often flew within a few inches of several other plants with white flowers, and then without further examination passed onwards in search of the Spiranthes. Again, many hive-bees which confined their ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... valley. Wych Hazel's dream has been realized. The valley is a garden of roses. They climb the walls of the cottages, they cluster on the palings, they stand by the way side. They are set in a ground of smoothest green; for the turf everywhere is perfectly cared for as if the valley were a park; smooth and rich and luxuriant, it carpets the whole valley, except only where the footpaths run and where the houses and gardens stand. The houses nowhere stand close together; there is plenty of garden ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... it with the higher courage of cheerfulness, serenity and ordinary behaviour. He spent the rest of the day in fact in his usual manner, enjoying his bathe before lunch, his hour of the paper and the quiet cigar afterward, his stroll over the springy turf of the downs, and he enjoyed also the couple of hours of work that brought him to dinner time. Then afterward he spent his evening, as was his weekly custom, at the club for young men which he had founded, where instead of being exposed to the ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... they ran, and they ran down the hill, and across a short cut on level green turf at the bottom, ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... hold of me. My knees shook together, and big drops of sweat gathered on my forehead. I roused myself and searched again; again I was baffled. Distractedly I beat the bushes round and round the tiny lawn, then flung myself down on the turf and gave way to my despair. To this, then, it had all come; this was the end for which I had abandoned my wife and child; this the treasure that had dangled so long before my eyes. Fool that I had been! I cursed my madness ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... their course, and steered for a desolate island near Guadaloupe, where, after taking out three hundred doubloons apiece, they landed, with the rest of the treasure packed in gun-cases, and hooped with iron; dug a hole in the earth and buried it; carefully removing the turf and replacing it, and carrying off all the dirt, and scattering it along the shore. That they took the bearings of certain natural objects, and marked the trees, and agreed among themselves, under oath, not to disturb the treasure till fifteen years had gone by, when it was to belong ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... satin shoes. Her stammered explanations were received with amusement and sympathy by her kind-hearted hosts, and she was carried off to her own rooms, 'the prettiest suite you ever saw,' she tells her father, 'a study, bedroom, and bath-room, a roaring turf fire in the rooms, an open piano, and lots of books scattered about. Betty, the old nurse, brought me a bowl of laughing potatoes, and gave me a hearty "Much good may it do you, miss"; and didn't I tip her a word of Irish, which delighted her.... Our dinner-party were mamma ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... peak of sunrise pil'd That set space glowing, With flames from air-based crater's blowing— I downward swept, beguiled By the close-set forest gilded and spread A sea for the lordly tread, Of a God's wardship— I broke its leafy turf with my breast; My iron lip I dipp'd in the cool of each whispering crest; From thy leafy steeps, I saw in my deeps, Red coral the flame necked oriole— But never the stir of a soul Heard I in ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... and looked down. Blent Hall made three sides of a square of old red-brick masonry, with a tower in the centre; it faced the river, and broad gravel-walks and broader lawns of level close-shaven turf ran down to the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... flank from the innumerable squadrons of Edward, he dug deep and wide pits near to Bannockburn, and having overlaid their mouths with turf and brushwood, proceeded to marshal his little phalanx on the shore of that brook till his front ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... life goes on with leisurely happiness outside the little room that isolates its tragic occupants; the smoke from fires of turf and wood is in the air; cottagers are at their morning cookery. After all the poet of the inn album was well inspired in his eloquent address:—"Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!" and only certain incidents, which time will soon efface, have ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... full uniform, "with bayonets glancing in the sun," made an imposing display, and everything was done to render it a memorable and impressive occasion. The ladies of the party—Mrs. Leavenworth, Mrs. Gooding, with their young daughters, and Mrs. Clark, with her baby boy were seated on the turf enjoying the novelty and beauty of the scene, when some Indian women, attracted by the unusual sight, drew timidly near and gazed in wonder at what they saw. One of the officers, Major Marston, the wag of the party, learning ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... stretched the vast city; around were countless effigies of the dead of every rank, from the plain slab of the undistinguished citizen to the wreathed obelisk of the hero, from the ancient monument of Abelard and Heloise to the broken turf on the new grave of poverty only designated by a wooden cross; gray clouds flitted along the zenith, and a pale streak of light defined the wide horizon; Paris with its frivolity, temples, business, pleasures, trophies and teeming life, sent up a confused and low murmur ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... there before her, evidently, for the turf was worn around the log, and there were even hints of footprints here and there. "Some rural trysting place, probably," she thought, then a gleam of scarlet caught her attention. A small red book had fallen into the crevice between the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... a little distance as if they were small hillocks, and they are built in the open fields. Why they are placed away from the village I was not told; but I would like to know. They have very much the look of underground dairy-cellars, and are built of great stones covered with turf. One or two men can go ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... upon a dense and almost impenetrable thicket which seemed admirably suited to my purpose; I accordingly forced my way into it until I found a spot of clear ground wide enough to stretch myself upon comfortably, when flinging myself upon the turf, and placing my bag beneath my head, I almost immediately dropped off into a deep ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... to prevent them from communicating with the sentinels on the walls, which was of course forbidden by the regulations of the prison, and that in the space between the railing and those walls they were tearing up pieces of turf, and wantonly pelting each other in a noisy and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... Birds sang, turf came to the water-edge, and trees grew from it. Away off among the trees I saw beautiful women walking. Their clothes were of many delicate colours and clung to them, and they were tall and graceful and had yellow hair. Their robes trailed over the grass. They glided in ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner

... the double ranks of stabled kine to where the great fire of turf and wood burned at the head of the hall, and laid me ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... which he had travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise. He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage. In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories, out-flung to the sea. On his right, a little farm, with its cluster of out-buildings, nestled in the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the sound of another horse's hoofs; and, looking back, she saw approaching her at a rapid rate a gentleman whom she knew to be a stranger. Not caring to be overtaken, she chirruped to the spirited Gritty, who, bounding over the velvety turf, left the unknown rider far ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... walk it was! What air over my head; what grass under my feet! The sweetness of the inner land, and the crisp saltness of the distant sea, were mixed in that delicious breeze. The short turf, fragrant with odorous herbs, rose and fell elastic, underfoot. The mountain-piles of white cloud moved in sublime procession along the blue field of heaven, overhead. The wild growth of prickly bushes, spread in great patches ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room (bastofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful, and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household read, or sang, about far-away knights and heroes, and the banquets they gave in splendid halls. In their imagination people thus tended ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... from Cork to Dublin we beheld misery and ruin in every form, burned cabins, churches, monasteries and bridges, and starving women and children on the roadside, crouching under bushes, straw stacks and leaking sheds, with smouldering turf fires crackling on the ashes ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... was fairly well chosen for the purpose. It was a tolerably firm piece of turf about a hundred yards long by some twenty broad and almost as smooth as a bowling green. It was the only solid piece of earth for some distance, all around being at ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... prodigal lavishness. On his Fifth avenue mansion alone, Cornelius expended $5,000,000. To get the space for three beds of blossoms and a few square yards of turf, a brownstone house adjoining his mansion was torn down, and the garden created at an expense of $400,000. George, a brother of Cornelius and of William K. Vanderbilt, and a man of retiring disposition, spent $6,000,000 in building a palatial home in the heart of the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... square-towered churches, occur at rare intervals in cultivated hollows, where there are fields and fruit trees. Water is nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As we rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where oxen and goats are browsing. The turf is starred with lilac gentian and crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the highest village, Berceto, with keen Alpine air. After that, broad rolling downs of yellowing grass and russet beech-scrub lead ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... present age, and well-nigh exploded. The popular belief no longer allows the possibility of existence to the race of mysterious beings which hovered betwixt this world and that which is invisible. The fairies have abandoned their moonlight turf; the witch no longer holds her black orgies in ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... have been that he had never found any royal road to literature; that to his experience there was not even a common highway; that there were only byways; private paths over other people's grounds; easements beaten out by feet that had passed before, and giving by a subsequent overgrowth of turf or brambles a deceitful sense of discovery ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... days of yore, no matter where or when, 'Twas ere the low creation swarm'd with men, That one Prometheus, sprung of heavenly birth (Our author's song can witness), lived on earth. He carved the turf to mould a manly frame, And stole from Jove his animating flame. 20 The sly contrivance o'er Olympus ran, When thus the Monarch of the Stars began: 'Oh versed in arts! whose daring thoughts aspire To kindle clay with never-dying fire! Enjoy thy glory past, that gift ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... each is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house—a house full of trophies, hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf, and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... Ortho of Syracuse gives thee this charge: Never venture out, drunk, on a wild winter's night. I did so and died. My possessions were large; Yet the turf that I'm clad with is ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... apple-tree, and sit there with the ease of a bird. She gathered an apple and ate it; then she dropped to the ground with the graceful ease we admire in a squirrel. Her limbs possessed an elasticity which took from every movement the slightest appearance of effort or constraint. She played upon the turf, rolling herself about like a child; then, suddenly, she flung her feet and hands forward, and lay at full length on the grass, with the grace and natural ease of a young cat asleep in the sun. Thunder sounded in the distance, and she turned suddenly, rising on her ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac

... flattened gullies which mark the higher slope. Here and there an unmelted patch of snow appeared, grass could be seen, and at last we were upon the roll of the high land where it runs up steeply to the ridge of the chain. Moss and the sponging of moisture in the turf were beneath our feet, the path disappeared, and our climb got steeper and steeper; and still the little man went on before, pressing eagerly and breasting the hill. I neither felt fatigue nor noticed that I did not feel it. The extreme angle of the slope suited my mood, nor was I conscious ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... we may never listen to again among the Lochs, but the lesson of the hour (how it rained that black night!) is stamped for life upon our remembrance. "Clap your back against the cliff," he shouted, "and never mind the deluge!" Rest, glorious Christopher, under the turf you trod with such a gallant bearing! Few mortals knew how to rough it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... the Holy Land. Pleas'd with my admiration, and the fire His speech struck from me; the old man would shake His years away, and act his young encounters. Then having shewn his wounds; he'd sit him down. And all the live long day, discourse of war. To help my fancy, in the smooth green turf He cut the figures of the marshall'd hosts: Describ'd the motions, and explain'd the use Of the deep column and lengthen'd line, The square, the crescent, and the phalanx firm; For, all that Saracen or Christian knew Of war's vast art, was to this hermit known. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... and on reaching the green spot in question, shouted out that he could discern nothing; but presently added, as he moved about, that the turf heaved like a sway-bed beneath his feet, and he thought—to use his own phraseology—would "brast." The abbot then commanded him to go down to the orchard below, and if he could find Demdike to bring him to him instantly. The forester did as he was ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... he crunched under his feet, purposely, the turf he was standing on, and so carrying out, naturally, the gesture of clasping the air, in establishing his balance—as if it was ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... switched about her calves, over the boot-tops. She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor's. Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees that draught-horse neck among the peasant ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... little bays with bathing sands, and then we drove to Miss Mason, who lives in a very pretty villa with her sister, and is very rich, and we all walked together to the Cliff, where there is a fashionable promenade, with rocks and sea on one side and green turf and the villas with their gardens all open on the other. If any one has a pretty house or place here it is all exposed to the public gaze, and even use, a great deal! We then drove to Mrs. Bruen's, where Hedley and I lunched. ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... her in the mood in which she makes her briars and thorns; whereas for the creation of some women she reserves the May morning hours, when with light and dew she wooes the primrose from the turf and the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the power of love. A cricket and a butterfly settle down before her: one on a piece of burnt-up turf, one on the dark flat surface of a rock which the receding tide has left bare. The barren surfaces are transfigured by their brightness. Just so will love settle on the low or barren in life, and ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Johnstone. The house had always been tumbledown, and the tenancy of Bridget and her brood had not improved it externally. The lease was evidently a repairing one. For holes in the thatch roof were stopped with heather, or mended with broad slabs of turf held down with stones and laboriously strengthened with wattle—a marvel of a roof. It is certain that Boyd's efforts were never continuous. He tired of everything in an hour, or sooner—unless somebody, preferably a woman, was watching him ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... rarer elements, sufficient in number to preserve for him a unique place among America's most original characters, scholarly wits, and poets of brightest fancy. Yorick is no more! But his genius will need no chance upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance. When all is sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen than ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... manure or mixture for each plot was ground up, or otherwise mixed, with a sufficient quantity of soil and turf-ashes to make it up to a convenient measure for equal distribution over the land. The mixtures so prepared were, with proper precautions, sown broadcast by hand; as it has been found that the application of an exact amount of manure, to a limited area of land, ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... grazing animal. That broad, smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of green sward. She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does not bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best friend, and will make it thick and smooth ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... from its load of care by emigrating en masse for the day to a race-meeting at Sandown or Kempton. There the Hurlingham Girl is as much at home as though she were native to the spot, sprung, as it were, from the very turf itself. The interest she takes or pretends to take in racing is something astounding. For in truth she knows nothing about horses, their points, their pedigrees, or their performances. Yet she chatters about them and their races, their jockeys, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... have repeated your experiments in relation to the collection of the mud, turf, sods, etc., and have known them to be carried many hundred miles off and identified. I have also found the little depressions caused by the tread of cattle affording a fine nidus for the plants. You have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... summits of the nearer-lying mountains, which surround the scene of his repose, and the yellow gowan opens its bosom by the banks of the mountain stream, to welcome the lights and shadows of the spring returning over the land, many are the wild daisies which adorn the turf that covers the remains of THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. And a verse of one of the songs of his early days, bright and blissful as they were, is thus strikingly verified, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... the warmth of my tent, I dug a hole inside, which I arranged as a fire-place, carrying the smoke underneath the walls, and building a turf-chimney outside. I was not long in proving the experiment, and, finding that it went exceedingly well, I was not a little vain of the invention. However, it came on to rain very hard while I was dining at a neighbouring tent, and, on my return to my own, I found the fire not only extinguished, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... I seem in a terrestrial purgatory that is neither town or country. The face of England is so beautiful, that I do not believe Tempe or Arcadia were half so rural; for both lying in hot climates, must have wanted the turf of our lawns. It is unfortunate to have so pastoral a taste, when I want a cane more than a crook. We are absurd creatures; at twenty I loved nothing ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between these low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend plains having nothing in common with our meadows, upon which weeds smother useful plants. There is none of that fine turf which seems like down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces a brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and thorny herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... touched hers for a brief moment; the next he was in the saddle. His spur lightly touched the horse's flank, and the springy turf yielded to the iron-shod hooves; there was a waving of a disappearing hand, and the brown girl was ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... those forms which, on the whole, are best adapted to the conditions which at any period obtain; and which are, therefore, in that respect, and only in that respect, the fittest. The acme reached by the cosmic process in the vegetation of the Downs is seen in the turf with its weeds and gorse. Under the conditions, they have come out of the struggle victorious; and, by surviving, have proved that they are ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... flowers everywhere. I headed for the Park, and there was the grass all green, and the trees coming out, and a sort of something in the air—why, say, if there hadn't have been a big policeman keeping an eye on me, I'd have flung myself down and bitten chunks out of the turf. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... between that city and Kerman the country is said to be in parts "picturesque and romantic," consisting of "low luxuriant valleys or; plains separated by ranges of low mountains, green to their very summits with beautiful turf." The plains of Khubbes, Merdasht, Ujan, Shiraz, Kazerun, and others, produce abundantly under a very inefficient system of cultivation. Even in the most arid tracts there is generally a time of greenness ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... I could see nothing distinctly; there was a turf-fire throwing a red glare out of the chimney, a dim oil-lamp hung from the roof, but everything was hidden in a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, through which the light was not sufficiently ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... the well-being of trout; this is quite a mistake. Personally, I believe that a good earth bottom is best in a rearing pond, and even in a pond lined with concrete I should always put a layer of mould, preferably turf mould, at the bottom. With the use of this mould during the subsequent operations in rearing trout I shall ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker

... the work I 'ave ter do, lookin' after you and the cookin' and gettin' everythin' ready and doin' all the 'ouse-work, and goin' aht charring besides—well, I says, if I don't 'ave a drop of beer, I says, ter pull me together, I should be under the turf in no time.' ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... Turf Club premises were in the occupation for a considerable period of Sir Richard Garth, Chief Justice of Bengal, father of the present Sir William Garth, and he and Lady Garth were great favourites and very popular in Calcutta society. They used to entertain a good deal and give a ball ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey

... hither early in the day, we had time sufficient to survey the place. The house was built like other huts of loose stones, but the part in which we dined and slept was lined with turf and wattled with twigs, which kept the earth from falling. Near it was a garden of turnips and a field of potatoes. It stands in a glen, or valley, pleasantly watered by a winding river. But this country, however it may delight the gazer or amuse the naturalist, is of no great ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... of his country. Mr. Disraeli, however, pays in many respects a tribute that is no more than just to the memory of Lord George, and his book affords material for an impartial judgment. At that period the noble lord was a distinguished patron of the turf: all England knew him as a sporting gentleman, a first-rate judge of horses, and an extensive winner on the course. In allusion to his habits in these respects, it became a popular sneer that the Conservatives ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... corresponding one on the North, some thousand feet, more or less. All this to be scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the sides; high enough; for it must be rammed down there, and shaped stair-wise into as many as 'thirty ranges of convenient seats,' firm-trimmed with turf, covered with enduring timber;—and then our huge pyramidal Fatherland's-Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped! Force-work with a vengeance; it is a World's Amphitheatre! There are but fifteen ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... character, and gradually imbued it with their influence, till she becomes a lover of sick-chambers, taking pleasure in receiving dying breaths and in laying out the dead; also having her mind full of funeral reminiscences, and possessing more acquaintances beneath the burial turf than above it. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... easier position. He lay upon the soft turf and he had doubled his blanket under his head as a pillow. At first the droning noises of camp or preparation had come from afar, but soon they ceased and now the frogs down by the sluggish waters ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... a wild rose-tree just rising and looking from her blushing cup, Eve flitted to and fro among them, and, all the time, Luigi's gaze brooded over the scene. Sometimes her shadow fell in the lighted space of turf, and then Luigi went and laid his cheek upon it; it passed, and he returned once more to his hiding-place, and the dark, motionless countenance, with its wandering, glittering eyes, appeared to hang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... prodigy) locomotory; one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... majestic fronts scarred with the batterings of unnumbered storms. On either hand the shore swept round, completing the arc of one wide-extended bay, cleft in many places by paths which led up, now through lanes overhung by rocks of various coloured sand, and now along downs of softest turf, to the little town, or, further off, to solitary dwellings or clustering hamlets. Pebbles of dazzling whiteness lined the upper part of the slope down to the beach; and these were succeeded by a broad and even flooring of tough sand, along which visitors, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... flag spotted with bright moss, and leaped into a pool glassy clear; thence it stole away between grassy banks, nursing the trees before it vanished in the thirsty sand. A few narrow paths were noticeable about the margin of the pool; otherwise the space around was untrodden turf, at sight of which the guide was assured of rest free from intrusion by men. The horses were presently turned loose, and from the kneeling camel the Ethiopian assisted Balthasar and Iras; whereupon the old man, turning his face to the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... He told me his name yesterday." She nods towards the motionless figure on the turf. It is not a corpse yet; that is all that can be said, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... remnants of a Brahmana's dish are like ambrosia. They are like the lacteal sustenance that is yielded by the mother's breast. People highly prize those remnants. The good, by eating them attain to Brahma. He who pounds turf to clay (for making sacrificial altars), or he who cuts grass (for making sacrificial fuel), or he who uses his nails only (and not weapons of any kind) for eating (sanctified meat), or he who always subsists on the remnants of Brahmana's dishes, or he who acts, induced ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... remembered clearly what happened to him that night after he had plunged down the cypress avenue, his feet making no sound on the green turf. In the mad hours he found his first way into haunts of the Subura which later became familiar enough to him, and at dawn he came home spent. Standing at his window, he watched the pitiless, grey light break over Rome. The magic city of the moonlit night, the creation of fragile, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... Trent. Marlowe nodded and went on his way. The thick turf of the lawn round which the drive took its circular sweep made Trent's footsteps as noiseless as a cat's. In a few moments he was looking in through the open leaves of the window at the southward end of the house, considering with a smile a very broad back and a bent head covered with short grizzled ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... alluring fragrance as of bygone lavender and roses. Never again would she wander in the garden, revelling in the beauties of colour and scent and form which made so lovely a picture in the glorious setting of turf and river. Never again would she stroll beneath the tall trees in the summer dusk, while the owls hooted eerily and the nightingale murmured luscious love-songs to the dreaming roses. The river would know her no more; never again would ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... ushered into a low long room on the ground-floor, paved with flag-stones, having an immense hearth at one end. Inside the chimney, and on each side of the blazing fire built of logs and turf, were two oak benches, so that six guests could literally sit in the chimney-corner. This recess was made beautiful by blue and white ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... which he had but few equals, and no superiors. Among other stories of his strength and agility, there is one which you may come across some day in the course of your reading, relating how that, at a leaping-match, he cleared twenty-two feet seven inches of dead level turf at a ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... fashion, and make, or fancy they make, for themselves out of the things of the present life a defence and a strength. Like some poor lunatic, out upon a moor, that fancies himself ensconced in a castle; like some barbarous tribes behind their stockades or crowding at the back of a little turf wall, or in some old tumble-down fort that the first shot will bring rattling down about their ears, fancying themselves perfectly secure and defended—so do men deal with these outward things that are given them for another purpose ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... his foe with his nostrils all wide, And the shouts of his backers rolled on in their pride. The swells of the Ring and the stars of the Turf Surged round like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various

... a spot incommoded with mud and reeds. I sunk knee-deep into the former, and was exhausted by the fatigue of extricating myself. At length I recovered firm ground, and threw myself on the turf to repair my wasted strength, and to reflect on the measures which my future welfare ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... down the spit, and it took me a goodish while to get up with it, crawling, often on all-fours, among the scrub. Night had almost come when I laid my hand on its rough sides. Right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick underwood about knee-deep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the center of the dell, sure enough, a little tent of goat-skins, like what the gypsies carry ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dodged from behind one tree to the next, and then into the shadow of the park paling instead of keeping to the footpath. It looked queer. I caught up my field glass and marked him at one point where he was bound to come into the open for a few steps. He crossed the strip of turf with giant strides and got into cover again, but not quick enough to prevent me recognizing him. It was—great heavens!—the bishop! In a soft hat pulled over his forehead, with a long cloak and a big stick, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... of corn meal and pints of soup as any one," said Emmeline; "and knows exactly how much turf it takes to boil fifteen stone of pudding; don't you, Clara? But come upstairs, for we haven't long, and I know you are frozen. You must dress with us, dear; for there will be no fire in your own room, as ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... agitated pareus, while from all sides rose cries, shouts, hysterical laughter, and the sound of clapping hands and thumping feet. Here and there dancers fell exhausted, until by elimination the dance resolved itself into a duet, all yielding the turf to Many Daughters, the little, lovely leper, and Kekela Avaua, chief of Paumau. These left the lawn and advanced to the veranda, where so contagious had become the enthusiasm that the governor was doing the hurahura opposite Bauda, and Ah Yu danced with Apporo, while Song, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... out on a marsh eating raspberries. When he glanced up, a big black bear stood beside him. Robber Father broke off an osier twig and struck the bear on the nose. "Keep to your own ground, you!" he said; "this is my turf." Then the huge bear turned around and lumbered off ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... the interval in stripping off all unnecessary apparel, and girding ourselves with our bags of "scent," or scraps of torn-up paper, which we are to drop as we run. Then we sit and wait the moment for starting. The turf is crisp under our feet; the sun is just warm enough to keep us from shivering as we sit, and the wind just strong enough to be fresh. Altogether it is to be doubted if a real meet of real hounds to hunt real hares—a cruel and not ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... of him. When the news of the illicit connection his nephew was reported to have formed reached him, he at first resolved to break it off; but observing that Philip no longer gambled, nor ran in debt, and had retired from the turf to the safer and more economical pastimes of the field, he contented himself with inquiries which satisfied him that Philip was not married; and perhaps he thought it, on the whole, more prudent to wink at an error that was not attended by the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... in the rich breezes, and the dyes Of the glad flowers are won from her blue eyes Exulting; whilst loud songs, on the fleet wing Of the Earth's seraphs, bear her welcoming From it to heaven, and, up to the far skies, From turf-born censers floods of incense rise. I can think of thee in my wandering; And when the heart leaps up within to bless The sights of love and beauty, on each hand,— The pouring-out of sky-sprung happiness Over the dancing sea and the green land, Thought wakes one saddening ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... world, who knows? I brought some money back with me, from the goldfields. It was not enough to be called a fortune—I mean the sort of fortune which might persuade your father to let you marry me. Well! here in England, I had an opportunity of making ten times more of it on the turf; and, let me add, with private information of the horses which I might certainly count on to win. I don't stop to ask by what cruel roguery I was tempted to my ruin. My money is lost; and, with it, my last hope of a happy and harmless life with you comes to ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... in the lofty, sombre room at the rear of the house, overlooking a patch of turf between the house and the stable. Above the massive sideboard hung an oil portrait of the Colonel, a youthful painting but vigorous, where something of the old man's sweetness and gentle wisdom had been caught. This dining room had been done over the year ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... unknown. It is this rigid observance of the point of honour that tempts people like our gang in The Chequers bar to risk their shillings; they know that if they make a right guess their payment is safe. The statesman who called the turf "a vast instrument of national demoralization" was quite right, and if he could have lived to take a tour round the country in this year of grace he would have seen the flower of his nation given over ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... than delighted. Here this tiny shell of fresh unpainted wood peeped out from under the trees, the only house in sight except the distant white specks on far off farms, and the little wandering village in the river-threaded valley. It sat right on the turf,—no road, no path even, and the dark woods shadowed the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... and east of the castle of Pontefract. Here Lascelles, who had ridden much with his sister, forsook her and went ahead of the slow and heavy horses of that troop of men. The road was broadened out to forty yards of green turf between the trees, for this was a precaution against ambushes of robbers. Across the road, after he had ridden alone for an hour and a half, there was a guard of four men placed. And here, whilst he searched for his pass to come within the limits of the Court, he asked what news, ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... been lying about admiring the prospect, and in place a few soft moist puffs had come from quite another quarter; and as we looked there seemed to be a cloud of white smoke starting up out of a valley below us. As we watched it we suddenly became aware of another rolling along the short rough turf and over the shaley paths. Then a patch seemed to form here, another there, and these patches appeared to be stretching out their hands to each other all round the mountain till they formed a grey bank of mist, over the top of which we could see ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... leaden, and not far off a group of park benches, encircling the pedestal of a patriot in bronze, invited them to rest. But Dawnish was guiding her toward a lateral path which bent, through shrubberies, toward a strip of turf ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... fearful thought of the invasion of her shores,—a thought which rises among the spectral possibilities of the future,—we seem to feel a dull aching in the bones of our forefathers that lie beneath her green turf, as old soldiers feel pain in the limbs they have left long years ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... stood alone—even beyond the outskirts of the gay party. With Miss Cilly's blue dress he had nothing in common—as little with Faith's spotless white. Dark, weatherbeaten, dressed for his boat and the clam banks, he stood there on the green turf as if in a trance. Unable to follow one question or answer, his eager eye caught every word of Reuben's voice; his intent gaze read first the assurance that it would be right, then the assurance that it was. The whole world might have swept ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... glen, where the rain pours steady, Ye'll be gay an' glad for a prinkin' leddie; Where the rocks are all bare an' the turf is all sodden, An' lassies gae sad in their homespun ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie

... low-bending plies around 320 His busy nose, the steaming vapour snuff Inquisitive, nor leaves one turf untried, Till conscious of the recent stains, his heart Beats quick; his snuffling nose, his active tail Attest his joy; then with deep opening mouth That makes the welkin tremble, he proclaims The audacious felon; foot by foot he marks His winding way, while ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... thereof. The good man, wife, children, and other of their family, eat and sleep on the one side of the house, and their cattle on the other, very beastly and rudely in respect of civilisation. They are destitute of wood, their fire is turf and cow shardes. They have corn, bigge, and oats, with which they pay their king's rent to the maintenance of his house. They take great quantity of fish, which they dry in the wind and sun; they dress their meat very filthily, ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... wide-spread reputation as the nursery-ground for bull-fighters. To the arena it is what Newmarket is to the British turf. Everybody there walks about armed, but murder is not more rife in proportion than in London. As it happened, a fellow was shot while I was there, but that would not justify one in coming to the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... was more enthusiastic about the wood than anything. It was a mass of ancient oaks, where the sun never penetrated. The ground was carpeted with thick turf and quite free from caltrops. No other private property was so richly wooded; it was, perhaps, due to the primitive forest where the monastery had been founded which ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... but the maiden's heart sank. For a peat fire smouldered on the hearth and the room was filled with smoke. There was no easy chair, no couch on which to rest her weary body, so Lizzie dropped down on to a heap of green turf. ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... glass-topped wall, the letter between my knees, staring at the brick walk bordered with green turf. How strange it was, how incredibly strange! A curious sense of watchful, relentless destiny grew in me. Truly it slumbered not nor slept! I, who had cursed that child unborn, had reached over seas and helped it into ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... mind. He wouldn't say anything just then that might bring back that distant expression to her face. He knew very well how cold and forbidding she could be. So instead of saying what he wished to say he talked of Mary Rose and George Washington, and she listened and smiled and made holes in the turf with her parasol, but never once did she speak of the conversation she had had with Mary Rose which had caused her to throw down her brushes and treat herself to ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... stray apple-trees that came in my way, to make friends with it, or to ask after its health, if it were an old friend. These old apple-trees make very charming bits of the world in October; the leaves cling to them later than to the other trees, and the turf keeps short and green underneath; and in this grass, which was frosty in the morning, and has not quite dried yet, you can find some cold little cider apples, with one side knurly, and one shiny bright red or yellow cheek. ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... soon found, stretched out on the turf In spite of its fury it was unable to move as one or two of its legs had been ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... the trampling of hoofs resound upon the grassy turf, and the returned lancers, with Roblez and the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Turf" :   greensward, land, soil, cover, colloquialism, ground, jurisdiction, divot, city district



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