"Yew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has quitted her sheltering yew, Drowsily flying, and weaving anew Her dusky meshes o'er land and sea, How gently, O sleep, fall thy poppies on me! For I drink water, pure, cold, and bright, And my dreams are of heaven the livelong night. So hurrah for thee, water! hurrah! hurrah! Thou art silver ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... turf, or plastered with cow dung. In summer they lived in rude waggons or in huts made of the branches of trees. Of metals, native copper may have been beaten into ornaments, but tools and weapons were mostly of stone. Bows were made of the wood of the yew, ... trees were hollowed out for canoes by stone axes, aided by the use ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... have—which the infant daughter-tongue somehow devised for itself some centuries later. But Prudentius is almost always a poet, if a poet of the decadence, and he had as instruments a language and a prosody which were like a match rifle to a bow and arrows—not of yew and not cloth-yard shafts—when contrasted with the dialect and speech-craft of the unknown tenth-century Frenchman. Yet from some points of view, and especially from ours, the Anonymus of the Dark Ages wins. Prudentius spins out the story ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... dismissed for their long holidays, they would change the look of the academic apartment into that of a miniature Covent Garden market or greengrocer's shop, filling it up with heaps of evergreens—holly and ivy and yew, ad libitum, to be transformed by the aid of their nimble fingers into all sorts of floral decorations. Garlands were woven, elaborate illuminated texts and scrolls painted, and wondrous crosses of commingled laurel leaves and holly berries contrived; all of which went so far to change the aspect ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... your souls In vain the heaving tide of mourning rolls, If from your trails unto the crimson goals The weeper and the weeping must depart, If lust of blood come on you like a fiery dart And darken all the dark autumnal air, Then, then — be fair. Pluck a young ash tree or a sapling yew And at the root end fix an iron thorn, Then forth with rocking laughter of the horn And passing, with no belling retinue, All timorous, lesser sippers of the dew, Seek out some burly guardian of the hills And set your urgent thew against ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... of the Berkshire downs, and itself on a gentle elevation, there is an old hall with gable ends and lattice windows, standing in grounds which once were stately, and where there are yet glade-like terraces of yew trees, which give an air of dignity to a neglected scene. In the front of the hall huge gates of iron, highly wrought, and bearing an ancient date as well as the shield of a noble house, opened on a village green, round which were ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... maiden-sister, Miss Girzie, was the scrimpetest creature that could be; so that, in their hands, all the pretty policy of the Breadlands, that had cost a power of money to the old laird that was my patron, fell into decay and disorder; and the bonny yew-trees that were cut into the shape of peacocks, soon grew out of all shape, and are now doleful monuments of the major's tack, and that of Lady Skimmilk, as Miss Girzie Gilchrist, his sister, was nick-named by every ane that ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... how, standing on the narrow ledge, he had passed his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long, tossed horizon-line of the downs, and then dropped contentedly back to trace the arabesque of yew hedges about the fish-pond, and the shadow of the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... behind as they left the farm yard for the paddocks, then turning down the yew lane that led back to the house, she ran as though hounds were after her, reached the house, locked herself in her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed in a tempest of weeping, dragging a pillow over her head as if ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... woods of broad-leaved trees are known as "hardwoods," though poplar is as soft as pine, and the "coniferous woods" are known as "softwoods," notwithstanding the fact that yew ranks high in hardness even when compared ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... stolidly; "it's more cumfortable-like for us four to 'old together, and it's a better protection for the lady. I bean't afear'd of no Gers, I bean't! I'll go along o' yew officers and the lady, if ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... faintly in the distance, and all the game was afoot. "Come," thought Martin, "I shall soon fill the pot, and no one be the wiser." He took his stand behind a thick oak that commanded a view of an open glade, and strung his bow, a truly formidable weapon. It was of English yew, six feet two inches high, and thick in proportion; and Martin, broad-chested, with arms all iron and cord, and used to the bow from infancy, could draw a three-foot arrow to the head, and, when it flew, the eye could scarce follow it, and the bowstring twanged as musical ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... is the pride of Summer—the green prime— The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime Trembling,—and one upon the old oak tree! Where is the Dryad's immortality? Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through In ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... just beginning, for next evening, while she was waiting in her room until it was safe to carry food to the fugitives, a small stone came sharply against the window, and, looking out, she saw a dark figure standing in the shadow of the great yew-tree. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... palace by the eminent architect Carlo Borromini, and this accomplished designer had at the same time replanted and enlarged the ducal gardens. To Odo, who had never seen plantations more artful than the vineyards and mulberry orchards about Pontesordo, these perspectives of clipped beech and yew, these knots of box filled in with multi-coloured sand, appeared, with the fountains, colonnades and trellised arbours surmounted by globes of glass, to represent the very pattern and Paradise of gardens. It seemed indeed too ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... together; where the waves break it into cliffs, they are characteristic of our shores, and through its thin coat of whitish mould go the thirsty roots of our three trees—the beech, the holly, and the yew. For the clay and the sand might be deserted or flooded and the South Country would still remain, but if the Chalk Hills were taken away we might as well be in the Midlands." (Hilaire Belloc: ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Mr. Herbert for permission to enter here. I did not go to see it, but some of the party at the hotel did. They described the cloisters as being in a good state of preservation— cloisters are a kind of arched piazza running round a court yard, in this case having in its centre a magnificent yew tree. These ruins are taken great care of, therefore parts of the abbey are in a pretty good state of preservation. They tell of a certain man named John Drake, who took possession of the abbey kitchen about one hundred years ago, lived there as ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... swooped down from their mud villages, under the dizzy dormers and gables, to flush the flies on his muzzle, and whole flocks of little blue titmice fluttered just overhead, in their rovings from holly and laurel to newly tasseled firs and yew trees. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... on a bright moonlight night, comes reeling through the little white gate, and stumbling over the graves. He shouts and he sings, and is presently followed by others like unto himself, or worse. So, they all laugh at the dark solemn head of the yew tree, and throw stones up at the place where the moon ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... Spanish Snuff, and two of Clarets and Spanish (Villa Nova, Barcelona and Galicia) Wines. The book advertisements predominating still,—with at first only one or at most two general advertisements, as of Plain Spanish Snuff; Yew and Holly Plants for sale; the drinking glasses and decanters at the Flint Glass-House in Whitefryers; a large House to let with a Dove House, Stables, and all other conveniences; the sale of a deceased Gentleman's Furniture, or a Lieutenant's Commission lost or mislaid,—we come to the first of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... then the typewritten "Miss Ursula Brangwen, Yew Tree Cottage, Cossethay." It was all so complete and so final. He could not but feel the new position Ursula held, as recipient of that letter. It was an iron ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... be debonair, But we 've a weird to dree, I wis we maun be bumpit sair By boaties two and three: Sing stretchers of yew for our Toggere, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... direction of this voice, Barnabas came to a lawn screened from the house by hedges of clipped yew. At the further end of this lawn was a small building which had been made to look as much as possible like the after-cabin of a ship. It had a door midway, with a row of small, square windows on either side, and was ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... a cleft between two high mountains about twenty shepherds coming down, all clad in jerkins of black wool, and crowned with garlands, some of which were of yew, and some of cypress. Six of them carried a bier covered with various flowers and boughs. One of the goatherds said: "Those who come hither are bearing the corpse of Chrysostom, and at the foot of yonder mountain is the place where he desired to be interred." Four of them, with sharp pickaxes, were ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hopefully. For the summer-house locker contained an assortment of old tennis-bats, mallets and balls, that might prove more stimulating than rabbits and doves. Roy offered no objection; so they straggled across a corner of the lawn to a narrower strip behind the tall yew hedge. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... (Parus major) may be seen climbing branches, almost like a creeper; it often, like a shrike, kills small birds by blows on the head; and I have many times seen and heard it hammering the seeds of the yew on a branch, and thus breaking them like a nuthatch. In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... respects. The mansion had once on a time been the storehouse of the vanished Abbey. There the monks had stored the meal which the people dwelling on their lands brought to them instead of rent. Lovel found it a rambling, hither-and-thither old house, with tall hedges of yew all about it. These last were cut into arm-chairs, crowing cocks, and St. Georges in the act of slaying many dragons, all green and terrible. But one great yew had been left untouched by the shears, and under it Lovel found his late ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... neat little country house of his own in the village where my father's estate lay at Shandy. Behind this house was a kitchen garden of about half an acre; and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for. So that as Trim uttered the words, "a rood and a half of ground, to do what they would with," this ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... neighbourhood is well wooded and very pleasing to the eye. The church, on the hill-top, dates only from 1790; but the site was occupied by an earlier structure. The memorials are of no historic interest; but near the enormous yew tree in the churchyard stands the tomb of the first Lord Cottenham (d. 1851). Near by, too, lies Sir Lucas Pepys, physician to George III. (d. 1830). Totteridge Park, W. from the village, was the residence of Baron ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... 1825. This is, from a flowering point of view, probably the most useful of any member of this rather large genus. Its numerous pretty white flowers, dark, almost Yew-green leaves, and abundance of the showiest red berries in winter, will ever make this dwarf, clambering plant a favourite with those who are at all interested in beautiful shrubs. All, or nearly all, the species of Cotoneaster are remarkable and ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... Cosmo the age-long neglect of the place. Next appeared a wing built out from the back of the inner court of the castle—in a dilapidated, almost dangerous condition. Then he came to a great hedge of yew, very lofty, but very thin, like a fence of old wire that had caught cart-loads of withered rubbish in its meshes. Here he heard the sound of a spade, and by the accompanying sounds judged the implement was handled by an old man. He peeped ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... above-mentioned, but purely for the sake of being witty. Among innumerable instances that may be given of this nature, I shall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry, as I find it mentioned by our learned Camden in his Remains. Mr. Newberry, to represent his name by a picture, hung up at his door the sign of a yew-tree, that has several berries upon it, and in the midst of them a great golden N hung upon a bough of the tree, which by the help of a little false spelling made ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... waves, a fruitful soil! And ninety cities crown the sea-born isle: Mix'd with her genuine sons, adopted names In various tongues avow their various claims: Cydonians, dreadful with the bended yew, And bold Pelasgi boast a native's due: The Dorians, plumed amid the files of war, Her foodful glebe with fierce Achaians share; Cnossus, her capital of high command; Where sceptred Minos with impartial hand Divided right: each ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... remember how long he stood by the brook, but this is certain, that the longer he felt himself to be alone the more frightened he became. Then he began to fancy terrible things. At the top of the rock from which the waters fell there was a huge old yew-tree, or rather bush, which hung forward over the fall. It looked very black in comparison with the tender green of the other trees, and the white, glittering ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the second gate, they saw a black figure go by on an old white horse; then they came out on a long ascending lane with deep ruts, bordered by fresh soft turf on either sides, with hawthorn hedges, and at intervals dark yew trees. ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only about three miles long and two in breadth, with a circuit of nine miles in all. It rises out of the lake to an average height of three hundred feet, and is heavily wooded with cedar, beech, maple, and yew. Three of its sides are bold and rocky, the fourth slopes down gradually toward the north to meet the blue waters of the lake. The island is intersected in all directions with carriage-roads and paths, and in the bay are always ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... gave too garden-like and adorned a look to so solemn and sacred a spot; persons will not all think alike on such a matter: and yet something may be done in this direction with an effect which would please everybody. A few trees of the arbor vitae, the cypress, and the Irish yew, scattered here and there, with tirs in the hedge-rows or boundary fences, would be unobjectionable; while wooden baskets, or boxes, placed by the sides of the walks, and filled in summer with the fuchsia or scarlet geranium, would give our churchyards an exceedingly pretty, and perhaps not unsuitable ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Count Ganelon rode on, Until together had they pledged their faith To snare Rolland and lead him to his death. Thus on they rode through vales and mountain-paths, Till Sarraguce was reached. Beneath a yew They lighted: a faldstool by shady pines O'erhung, was spread with Alexandrine silk. There sat the King who ruled all Spain, and stood Around him twenty thousand Saracens, Who neither spoke nor breathed, to hear the news; And lo! came ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... regions odorous with pines; to hear the birds' chorus at sunrise and the distant sound of reaping; to see innumerable marvels; the belts of clover mantling wine-dark in the wind; the poppies in the standing corn, the carmine yew-stems on the downs; above you the soft grey clouds delicately floating; below you, as the day declines, some distant lonely water emerging in its glory to be the mirror and refuge of all heaven's light; to remember the gorse ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... after Nita Selim's murder, when he had come to interview Lydia Carr and had secured the alibi which had eliminated Dexter Sprague as a suspect—Dundee had driven his car up this hill between the tall yew hedges. But then he had taken the fork which led to the hooded doorway over the kitchen; had descended the kitchen stairs with Lydia, to the servants' sitting room in the basement. Now he continued along the main driveway to the more impressive entrance, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... churchyards unadorned with shades Or blossoms, but indulgent to the strong And natural dread of man's last home, the grave, Its frost and silence—they disposed around, To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues Of vegetable beauty. There the yew, Green ever amid the snows of winter, told Of immortality, and gracefully The willow, a perpetual mourner, drooped; And there the gadding woodbine crept about, And there the ancient ivy. From the spot Where the sweet maiden, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... as tough as fifty-year-old yew. Nothing couldn't kill him; but look, sir, look! See how they're getting up to the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... without discipline, comparatively speaking, and uncouthly armed, they all but vanquished the Norman chivalry. Trace their deeds in France, which they twice subdued; and even follow them to Spain, where they twanged the yew and raised the battle-axe, and left behind them a name of glory at Inglis Mendi, a name that shall last till fire consumes the Cantabrian hills. And, oh, in modern times, trace the deeds of these gallant men all over the world, and especially ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... good sequestered living by the help of a Presbyterian Parish, which had got the true owner out. And this Scotch Presbyterian, being well settled in this good living, began to reform the Churchyard, by cutting down a large yew-tree, and some other trees that were an ornament to the place, and very often a shelter to the parishioners; who, excepting against him for so doing, were answered, "That the trees were his, and 'twas lawful for ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... upwards towards the palace, through yew alley after yew alley, French chattering sounding behind them as they went; and the King, still in fluent English, though with an accent that increased as he talked, questioned them courteously as to England, spoke of the disputation of yesterday, discussed frankly enough the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... with patient courage, bore it for the sake of the dead first, and then for the sake of the living. Round her son, growing into sturdy young manhood, her heart's roots wound themselves, striking deep into his life, till one day he, too, was laid beneath the yew trees in the churchyard. From that deep shadow she came forth, bearing her cross of service to her kind, to live a life fragrant with the airs of Heaven, in fellowship with Him who, for love of man, daily gave ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... in finding it, for just at the back of the dense yew hedge there were half a dozen old-fashioned round-topped hives, whose occupants were busy going to and fro, save that at the hive nearest the cross-path a heavy cluster, betokening a late swarm, was hanging outside, looking like a double ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... branches, A chirp and a lilt, And crimson atilt on a swaying twig. Wings! Wings! And a little ruffled-out throat which sings. The forest bends, tumultuous With song. The woodpecker knocks, And the song-sparrow trills, Every fir, and cedar, and yew Has a nest or a bird, It is quite absurd To hear them cutting across each other: Peewits, and thrushes, and larks, all at once, And a loud cuckoo is trying to smother A wood-pigeon perched on a birch, "Roo—coo—oo—oo—" "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! That's one for you!" A blackbird whistles, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Judges, is difficult: but I believe I shall do wonderfully. I look forward with aversion to the little, dull labours of the Court of Sessions. You see, Temple, I have my troubles as well as you have. My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.' Letters of Boswell, p. 198. On June 19, he is 'vexed to think myself a coarse labourer in an obscure corner.... Mr. Hume says there will in all probability be a change of the Ministry soon, which he regrets. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... venerable yew, Which in the village churchyard grew, Two ravens sat. With solemn croak Thus to his mate ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... band went carrying rich treasure to decorate the pavilion of a Munster lord. On another road a vat of seasoned yew, monstrous as a house on wheels and drawn by an hundred laborious oxen, came bumping and joggling the ale that thirsty Connaught princes would drink. On a road again the learned men of Leinster, each with an idea in his head that would discomfit a northern ollav and make a southern ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... in the midst of a good run, and at some distance from Mansfield, when his horse being found to have flung a shoe, Henry Crawford had been obliged to give up, and make the best of his way back. "I told you I lost my way after passing that old farmhouse with the yew-trees, because I can never bear to ask; but I have not told you that, with my usual luck—for I never do wrong without gaining by it—I found myself in due time in the very place which I had a curiosity to see. I was suddenly, upon turning the corner of a steepish downy field, in the midst ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... fine gateway, which gave access to the walled enclosure round the house, broken away; and the enclosure within, which had been designed originally as a formal garden in the Italian style, and was now a mere tangled wilderness of weeds and coarse grass, backed by dense thickets of laurel and yew which had grown up in a close jungle round the house, so that many of the lower windows were ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... together in one grave in Willesden churchyard. There is a small yew-tree west of the church. Beneath that tree let us lie. In one grave, mind. Do you ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a rose-embowered terrace, a wide lawn, soft as thickest velvet, terminated in two great yews, set far apart, a sundial between them, and backgrounded by the sea and sky. To right and left were flower borders brilliant in colour, against yew hedges. Still farther to the right was the Tangle Garden, where climbing roses, honeysuckle, and clematis roamed over pergolas and old tree stumps at their own sweet will and fancy. Beyond the yew hedge on the left was another garden of yews, ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... and butternut and hazel reared their graceful forms aloft, and the ground beneath their spreading branches was strewn with the store of nuts which gave a portion of food for many of the beasts and for man as well. The ash and the yew were there, tough and springy of fiber and destined in the far future to become famous in song and story, because they would furnish the wood from which was made the weapon of the bowman. The maple was there with all its symmetry. There was the elm, the dogged ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... old laws enacted for the encouragement of archery, on which the defence of the kingdom was supposed much to depend. Every man was ordered to have a bow;[v] butts were ordered to be erected in every parish;[v*] and every bowyer was ordered, for each bow of yew which he made, to make two of elm or witch, for the service of the common people.[v**] The use of crossbows and handguns ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... direction, and liked to look at the site of the old hall near the road: nothing remained of it but the tall gate posts and rusty iron gates looking strangely dreary and deserted, and within one could see, between some dark yew trees, an old terrace walk with stone steps and balustrades—the most ghostly-looking place you ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... has its stone, not on the outside, enclosing the fruit, as the usual phrase would indicate, but on the end with the fruit behind it. The stone is only about the size of a sweet-pea, and the fruit only about twice that size, altogether not unlike a yew-berry, but of a very pale red. It grows on a tree just like an arbor vitae, and is well tasted, though not at all like a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... story, for Kitty was very reserved and kept her troubles to herself. The Major made no remark about the garden, which in itself was somewhat curious, for strangers were always in raptures over this old-world garden, with its yew-trees cut in quaint shapes, and its high walls, and its flowers, which seemed, every one of them, to belong ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... matter of the tale is to tell how her autocracy was threatened, tottered and recovered. I wish I had space to quote the description of the Lucas home, "converted" from two genuine cottages, to which had been added a wing at right-angles, even more Elizabethan than the original, and a yew-hedge, "brought entire from a neighbouring farm and transplanted with solid lumps of earth and indignant snails around its roots." Perhaps, apart from the joy of the setting, you may find some of the incidents, the faith-healer, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... great deal more, had there been time; and I have forgotten much of what I did see; but it is an exceedingly interesting place. There is an avenue of old yew-trees, which meet above like a cloistered arch; and this is called the Monks' Walk. I rather think they were ivy, though ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dark Was hung with ivy, brere, and yew; No shimmering sun here ever shone; No wholesome breeze here ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... seemed to be any trouble or burdensome. But at the first course there came a surprise in the form of a knight outside the door. As he sat on his charger, all armed from head to feet, he looked prouder than a bull, and a bull is a yew proud beast. One leg was fixed in the stirrup, but the other he had thrown over the mane of his horse's neck, to give himself a careless and jaunty air. Behold him advancing thus, though no one noticed him until he came forward with the words: "I ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... of the famished eagle and the gloomy desolation of the yew trees covered with snow saddened him much longer and more keenly than the perfume of the orange trees, the gracefulness of the vines, and the Moorish song of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left, which conducted me up the hill-side. I soon found myself in the deep shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections; for at every step my eye caught the name ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... delighted with their good hap. It seemed as though Fortune followed at their heels, or rather ran ahead of them, to arrange surprises. After a delicious tete-a-tete dinner behind one of the clipped yew trees in the quaint garden, they took a carriage and drove ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... poisoning, cantharides. 1. Irritant { Vegetable—all strong purgatives, hellebores, savin, { yew, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... white and pink and violet phlox bloomed there among the long grass and the intruding nettles. In the centre the round concrete fountain was no longer full of water, but a few brownish-green toads still inhabited it. The place smelt of box and sweetbriar and yew, and when you lay down on the grass where it grew short under the old yew tree by the fountain, you could see nothing but placid sky and waving green leaves. Martin Howe and Tom Randolph would spend there the ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... through these, Angela stopped under an ancient yew, and, pointing to one of the two shadowed mounts to which the moonlight scarcely struggled, said, in ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... turf; pasture, pasturage; turbary^; sedge, rush, weed; fungus, mushroom, toadstool; lichen, moss, conferva^, mold; growth; alfalfa, alfilaria^, banyan; blow, blowth^; floret^, petiole; pin grass, timothy, yam, yew, zinnia. foliage, branch, bough, ramage^, stem, tigella^; spray &c 51; leaf. flower, blossom, bine^; flowering plant; timber tree, fruit tree; pulse, legume. Adj. vegetable, vegetal, vegetive^, vegitous^; herbaceous, herbal; botanic^; sylvan, silvan^; arborary^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of yew, if ye be true, In London, where ye were bought, Fingers five, get up belive[71], ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and surrounded by a rail—a statue not such as the later genius of the Athenian represented the god of light, and youth, and beauty; not wrought from Parian marble, or smoothest ivory, and in the divinest proportions of the human form, but rude, formal, and roughly hewn from the wood of the yew-tree—some early effigy of the god, made by the simple piety of the first Dorian colonisers of Byzantium. Three forms stood mute by an altar, equally homely and ancient, and adorned with horns, placed a little apart, and considerably below ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... to wheat, ivy to walls, the water-lily to lecherous monks, the birchen rod to the scholars of the college of Navarre in Paris, colewort to the vine-tree, garlic to the loadstone, onions to the sight, fern-seed to women with child, willow-grain to vicious nuns, the yew-tree shade to those that sleep under it, wolfsbane to wolves and libbards, the smell of fig-tree to mad bulls, hemlock to goslings, purslane to the teeth, or oil to trees. For we have seen many of those rogues, by virtue and right application of this herb, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the very windows, and dark Scotch firs shed a gloom all over the Park. Dangerfield is one of those places that seem always to be in the shade. How the strawberries ever ripen, or the flowers ever bloom, or the birds ever sing there is to me a mystery. Outside there are dark walls and yew hedges and cypresses, and here and there a copper beech, with lawns that are never mown and copses that are never thinned, to say nothing of that stagnant moat, with its sombre and prolific vegetation; whilst within, black oak wainscoting, and heavy tapestry, and winding ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... of Cheapside and the Cutters of Mincing Lane, tall, ruddy-faced fellows, all armed with clubs, which they twirled and tossed and thwacked one another with in sport. Some wore straw hats with steeple-crowns, and some flat caps of green and white, or red and orange-tawny. Some had long yew bows and sheaves of arrows decked with garlands; and they were all exceedingly daubed in the face with dripping cherry-juice and with cheese, which they munched as they ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... 13. DAYEW "it sews itself up," because the leaves are said to grow together again when torn— Cacalia atriplicifolia— Tassel Flower: Held in great repute as a poultice for cuts, bruises, and cancer, to draw out the blood or poisonous matter. The bruised leaf is bound over the spot and frequently ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... corners o' that's eyes an' that said: "I'll give you three guesses every night to guess my name, an' if you hain't guessed it afore the month's up, yew shall be mine." ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... clear that even at the distance he fancied he could distinguish some one gesticulating, or so it seemed, behind the glass. This went on for a minute or more. Then the window was closed. At the same time he noticed a sparkling of glass and brasswork behind the clipped yew hedge which extended beyond the east wing. After some puzzling, he made out that a motor car was ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... in sable stole, Graceful in years, pant eager for the goal. Old Norbury starts, and, with the seventh-form boys, In weeds of Greek the church-yard's peace annoys, With classic Weston, Charley Coote and Tew, In dismal dance about the mournful yew. But first in notes Sicilian placed on high, Bates sounds the soft precluding symphony; And in sad cadence, as the bands condense, The curfew tolls ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... to whom through those black walls of yew Their talk had pierced, her father: 'Ay, a flash, I fear me, that will strike my blossom dead. Too courteous are ye, fair Lord Lancelot. I pray you, use some rough discourtesy To blunt or ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... showed for a moment. They had entered the herb garden and were passing slowly down the central path. It was a small enclosure surrounded by clipped yew hedges and intersected by green walks. The evening sunlight slanting down upon her, had turned her brown hair to ruddiest gold. There was no agitation about her now. The ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... garden-ground, in extent barely a square acre, is a kingdom with its own interests, annals, and incidents. Something is always happening in it. To-day is always different from yesterday. This spring a chaffinch built a nest in one of my yew-trees. The particular yew which the bird did me the honour to select had been clipped long ago into a similitude of Adam, and, in fact, went by his name. The resemblance to a human figure was, of course, remote, but the intention was evident. In the black shock head of our ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... mighty moon was gathering light [1] Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise, And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes; When, turning round a cassia, full in view Death, walking all alone beneath a yew, And talking to himself, first met his sight: "You must begone," said Death, "these walks are mine". Love wept and spread his sheeny vans [2] for flight; Yet ere he parted said, "This hour is thine; Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree Stands in the sun and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of the richest grass country in England, with its grounds sloping to the brimming river that wound through meadows which in May were a blaze of golden buttercups, it was a typical English home, with quaint old gables, high chimney stacks and old-world garden with yew hedges trimmed fantastically as in the days of wigs and patches. I had snatched a week-end several times to be old Mrs. Mivart's guest; therefore I knew the picturesque old place well, and had been entranced by its ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... hearse Of the dismal yew; Maidens, willow branches bear; Say I died true. My love was false, but I was firm From my hour of birth. Upon my buried body lie Lightly, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... persons, whose showy, various-coloured garments, and sooty skin, contrasted with the picturesque and lovely appearance of the scenery, produced an unspeakably charming effect. The foliage exhibited every variety and tint of green, from the sombre shade of the melancholy yew, to the lively verdure of the poplar and young oak. "For myself," says John Lander, "I was delighted with the agreeable ramble, and imagined that I could distinguish from the notes of the songsters of the grove, the swelling strains of the English skylark and thrush, with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of these three were etchings, and two water-colors of a very simple sort; leather-covered chairs; a long table in the center, on which were strewn sundry magazines and papers, also several photographs; and at one end of the room a big fireplace, where a yew log smoldered. Here my inventory was cut short by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... had been searched from end to end without result. The children had been to the particular hiding- places each knew best, Tim to the dirty nook between the ilex and the larder window, and Judy to the scooped-out trunk of the rotten elm, and both together to the somewhat smelly channel between the yew trees and a disused outhouse—all ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... for Parliament in Westchester and the King is back at Windsor. My mother wears a lace cap down to breakfast, and the place is famous for its tapestries and yew trees and family ghost. I haven't been home in ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... lightning strays, And scares the gliding ghosts of the heath! Now on the leafless yew it plays, Where hangs the shield of this ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Balm of Gilead has not been found in modern times, although the localities in which it anciently grew have been carefully explored.] It is, however, said that the yew tree, Taxus baccata, formerly very common in England, Germany, and—as we are authorized to infer from Theophrastus—in Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... already a-foot when we proceeded from the parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to join them. The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale; for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature. Willows and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the living wend their way beneath them, subdued to seriousness, it may be, by the breathless voice that dwells in every well-remembered mound. There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... our years; they are gone as the days are gone, and the bare branches silently speak of a new year, slowly advancing to its buds, its foliage, and fruit. Deciduous trees associate with human life as this yew never can. Clothed in its yellowish-green needles, its tarnished green, it knows no hope or sorrow; it is indifferent to winter, and does not look forward to summer. With their annual loss of leaves, and renewal, oak and elm and ash and beech seem to stand by us and to share our thoughts. There ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... he called it, by "interfering in church matters," when he nailed it up. After a few minutes she dropped over the low church-yard wall into the meadow below, and flung herself down on the grass in the short shadow of a yew near at hand. What little air there was to be had came to her across the Drone, together with the sound of the water lazily nudging the bank and whispering to the reeds little jokelets which they had heard a ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... By Norman arrow laid low,— When the shield-wall was breach'd by the shaft, —Thou art avenged by the bow! Chivalry! name of romance! Thou art henceforth but a name! Weapon that none can withstand, Yew in the Englishman's hand, Flight-shaft unerring in aim! As a lightning-struck forest the foemen Shiver down to the stroke of the bowmen:— —'O to-day is a day will be written in story To the great world's end, and for ever! So, let the boy ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... rude jests, like the youths of the present day; nor dragged into court for a petty suit, greedy, pettifogging, knavish; but you shall descend to the Academy and run races beneath the sacred olives along with some modest compeer, crowned with white reeds, redolent of yew, and careless ease, of leaf-shedding white poplar, rejoicing in the season of spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the elm. If you do these things which I say, and apply your mind to these, you will ever have a stout chest, a clear complexion, broad shoulders, a little ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... branches, of shrewd sense and caustic humour, which in her were combined with the creative imagination. She was born in 1775, at Steventon, in Hampshire, a country parish, of which her father was the rector. A village of cottages at the foot of a gentle slope, an old church with its coeval yew, an old manor-house, an old parsonage all surrounded by tall elms, green meadows, hedgerows full of primroses and wild hyacinths—such was the scene in which Jane Austen grew. It is the picture which rises in the mind of every Englishman when he thinks of his country. Around dwelt the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the young gods easily In the days when you are young; But I go smelling yew and sods, And I know there are gods behind the gods, Gods that are ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... with thoughts of another world that should reunite him to her and be the dawn of new happiness; like a man who should illusorily confound the last glistening of a wintry sunset seen through dark yew-branches, with the broad-beaming strength of the summer morning. "If I thought," he said, "that I should not see her in the other life, my poor imagination would shrink from the idea of perfect bliss, which I would fain promise myself in it."[237] ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... good yew bows, And looked their strings were round, The market place in merry Carlisle They beset ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... 'Neath the yew tree's gloomy branches, Rears a mound its verdant head, As if to receive the riches Which the dew of heaven doth spread; Many a foot doth inconsiderate Tread upon the humble pile, And doth crush the turf so ornate:— That's the Poor Man's Grave ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... burning throughout the Christmas season, might have been witnessed in the secluded and beautiful hill-country of West Shropshire, from Chirbury and Worthen to Pulverbatch and Pontesbury. The Christmas brand or brund, as they called it, was a great trunk of seasoned oak, holly, yew, or crab-tree, drawn by horses to the farm-house door and thence rolled by means of rollers and levers to the back of the wide open hearth, where the fire was made up in front of it. The embers were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully tended, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... tell!" she exclaims. "I thought yew were in Pa-ar—is! Ma, would yew have concluded to find Lord Algy here? This is too lovely! If I'd known yew were coming I'd have stopped ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt—with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby—with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen—with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... here is plentie of yew for bowstaues. I caused three horse loades to be bought vs for to know the trueth: but they were cut out of season this moneth of April, the sap being in them. Three moneths I neuer left speaking ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... Philip's dwelling fronted on the street, The latest house to landward; but behind With one small gate that open'd on the waste, Flourish'd a little garden square and wall'd: And in it throve an ancient evergreen, A yew tree, and all round it ran a walk Of shingle, and a walk divided it: But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole Up by the wall, behind the yew; and thence That which he better might have shunn'd, if griefs Like his have ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson
... osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the land broke into swelling downs and winding dales of no great height or depth, with a few scattered trees about the hillsides, mostly thorns or scrubby oaks, gnarled and bent and kept down by the western wind: here and there also were yew-trees, and whiles the hillsides would be grown over with box-wood, but none very great; and often juniper grew abundantly. This then was the country of the Shepherds, who were friends both of the Dalesmen and the Woodlanders. They dwelt not in any fenced town or thorp, but their homesteads were ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the Hall and the Dower House were all that they should be, and the path that ran through the gardens of the one and the yew hedge and orchard of the other was almost as well trodden as if all still ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... old-world plesaunce were quite familiar to him, Gerald goes straight on, down a grass path ending in what appears to be a high impenetrable wall of yew, and Nancy, surprised, then sees that a narrow, shaft-like way leads straight through the ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... she glanced round to see if Mr Roy noticed where she was standing. No. His earnest face and pursed-up mouth looked more engrossed than ever. Neither of the speakers could see her, for between her and them there was a small piece of thick yew hedge. So, secure in her wrong-doing, Biddy lent an attentive ear and forgot her duty, the baby, and everything else. She could ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it; My part of death no one so true ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... solitary gardening man would cross me—and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then,—and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at—or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me—or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... briars, and weeds sprouting in tufts from the loose stones, all unite to raise those melancholy impressions, which are the merit of such scenes, and which can scarcely anywhere be felt more completely. The cloisters form a dismal area, in the centre of which grows the most prodigious yew-tree I ever beheld, in one great stem, two feet diameter, and fourteen feet high, from whence a vast head of branches spreads on every side, so as to perform a perfect canopy to the whole space. I looked for its fit inhabitant; it is a ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... looked keenly about me for a sapling or small tree that might serve as a ladder, and before long I came upon exactly the kind of thing I wanted. It was a young tree, somewhat resembling a yew, about twenty feet high, with a number of branches springing from its trunk close together and radiating in all directions, the lowest branch being about seven feet from the ground. This tree I at once attacked, and, the wood being ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... close to the red cottage. By this time the rain had stopped. I came up to within a few yards of the Abbey gates, stood for a moment, and then returned till I was at the wicket of Miss Bassett's garden. It's bounded by a yew hedge, beyond which there is a path shaded by mulberry-trees. The hedge is low. The path is dark. It was a blackguardly thing to do, but I thought of nothing except myself, my wrong, and how I was to wipe it out. I opened the wicket, ...
— The Spinster - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... that met my eye against the iron-grey of the horizon, were some of those shrubs or trees that grow like our junipers, some six feet high, in form like a miniature poplar, with the darker foliage of the yew. I do not know the name of the plant, but I have often seen it in such ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... her, and she did not linger now. She made haste to leave us." "I remembered where the three were laid—in what narrow, dark dwellings." "Do you know this place? No, you never saw it; but you recognize the nature of these trees, this foliage—the cypress, the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place." "Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the insufferable ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... with his finger and from behind the old yew arbour came the shrill clamour of a little dog in agony. It brought Barbara flying out of the house. Liosha followed leisurely. The yelping ceased. Mr. Ras Fendihook went to meet his hostess. Doria, Jaffery and I looked at one another in mutual ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... harmless, but the leaves of the yew are undoubtedly poisonous. See Withering's British ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... of Weston Wood the travelers could see the long white band which dipped and curved and rose over the green downland, its course marked even in the hollows by the line of the old yew-trees which flanked it. Neither Nigel nor Aylward had wandered far from their own country, and now they rode with light hearts and eager eyes taking note of all the varied pictures of nature and of man which passed before them. To their left ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as he paused thus, he heard a step approaching, a man's tread, quick and light yet assured, and he beheld one shrouded in a long cloak of blue, a tall figure that hasted through the garden and vanished behind the tall yew hedge. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... him this morning in the lane, by the old yew grove, near the park. He was walking very lovingly with a pretty little girl. I wonder what there is in him to make the girls so fond of him. I raised my hat as he passed, and gave him the time of day, and hang me, if he did not start, as if ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... incognito. When I returned, I found that Mademoiselle had conducted her visitor to a grassy terrace which ran along the south side of the house, and was screened from the forest by an alley of apple trees, and from the east wind by a hedge of yew. Here, where the last rays of the sun threw sinuous shadows on the turf, and Paris seemed a million miles away, they were walking up and down, the sound of their laughter breaking the woodland silence. Mademoiselle had a fan, with which and an air of convent coquetry ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... fantastic forms, but with the advent of Le Notre the good taste which he propagated so widely promptly rejected these grotesques, which, for a fact, were an importation from Flanders, like the gloriettes. Not by the remotest suggestion could a clipped yew in the form of a peacock or a giraffe be called French. Le Notre eliminated the menagerie and the aviary, but kept certain geometrical forms, particularly with respect to hedges, where niches were frequently trimmed out for the placing of statues, columns surmounted with ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... ran the whole length of the long, two-storied house, broadening out into wide wings at the base of either tower, and, below the terrace, green, shaven lawns, dotted with old yew, sloped down to the edge of a natural lake which lay in the hollow of the valley, gleaming like a sheet of silver in the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... went to morning service with a stout yew bow on his back, his quiver full of arrows; shot a buck on his way back (by permission of the landlord), and sat down to his midday meal flanked by a tankard of chill October—at this stage, it is true, there were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... place near the sacred yew of the Thuleans. Wolf meets Theoda, and tells her, that Teut is alienating the people with the new religion, and that he must be slain. Theoda opposes him, but he turns from her, and goes to summon the old King ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... horror. A determined desperate courage reigned upon her brow. She gave the Lamp to Ambrosio; Then taking from him the Key, She unlocked the low Door, and entered the Cemetery. It was a vast and spacious Square planted with yew trees: Half of it belonged to the Abbey; The other half was the property of the Sisterhood of St. Clare, and was protected by a roof of Stone. The Division was marked by an iron railing, the wicket of ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... about my person some forty pounds' worth of British gold, and the same amount, say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They'll see me through together! After they're gone I shall lay my head in some English churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old gnarled black yew." ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... together, about 7,000 acres; but pictures and china are renowned; so is the cooking; and, with such wealth as is at our host's command, all the details are in perfection. In the park there are many fine beech and other trees, and the yew grows wonderfully, contrasting its dark tint with the soft, white may. On the slope of the hill, about three miles off, grow service-trees and juniper; and, from the ridge, one sees across the New Forest to the Solent and the Isle ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... season of the year afforded to be green. The conduits and |273| standards in the streets were likewise garnished."{41} Many people of the last generation will remember the old English mode of decoration—how sprigs of holly and yew, stuck into holes in the high pews, used to make the churches into miniature forests. Only upon the mistletoe does a trace of the ecclesiastical taboo remain, and even that is not universal, for at York Minster, for instance, some was laid ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... island in the middle of the sea. It was called the Isle of Yew. And in it were five important kingdoms ruled by men, and many woodland dells and forest glades and pleasant meadows and grim ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... these the Queens exert their might; One the left side, and t'other guards the right: Where each, by her respective armour known. Chooses the colour that is like her own. 60 Then the young Archers, two that snowy-white Bend the tough yew, and two as black as night; (Greece call'd them Mars's favourites heretofore, From their delight in war, and thirst of gore). These on each side the Monarch and his Queen 65 Surround obedient; next ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... here to the Abbey. The church we see was built and rebuilt by the Monastery, but whether on the ancient site we know not. It is a small but beautiful example of perpendicular architecture, and with the dark spreading yew tree, the remains of the old cross, and the delicately weathered tombstones, it makes a picture upon which the eye dwells with ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... two fine old yew-trees, now long since decayed and gone, but then spreading their dark-green arms over the little turf-covered graves. Reared against the buttresses of the church was an old stone coffin, together with a fragment of a curious monumental effigy, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... up, and reveals a large terra-cotta Bust.) At my request, this young lydy will now perceed to assoom the yew and kimplexion of life itself. Galatear, will you oblige us by kindly coming ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... ye be a good fellow,' the Squire continued, 'and set them going outside in some dance or other that they know? I'm dog-tired, and I want to have a yew words with Mr. Everard before we join 'em—hey, Everard? They are shy till somebody starts 'em; afterwards they'll ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... field and wood; Blent with the buckler and grouped with the spear Hang tusks of the boar, and horns of the deer— But De Thorold's guests beheld nought there That scented of human blood. The mighty wassail horn suspended From the tough yew-bow, at Hastings bended, With wreaths of bright holly and ivy bound, Were perches for falcons that shrilly screamed, While their look with the lightning of anger gleamed, As they chided the fawning of mastiff and hound, That crouched at the feet of each peasant guest, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... post-office to buy their tickets of admission to the castle, and when she called out that there were also pretty post-cards to be had, the others quickly followed. Having chosen their cards, they all walked through the little church-yard, with its ancient yew trees, and out into a field from which they ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... is from five to six feet long, made of lancewood or locust. Spanish yew is considered the choicest, next comes the Italian, then the English yew; lancewood and lancewood backed with hickory are used more than any other. In choosing a bow, get the best you can afford, it will prove the cheapest ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... composing his famous discourses, like another celebrated French writer, Balzac, wholly secluding himself from the world whilst thus occupied. A little garden-house in which he ate and slept leads out of this delightful walk, a cloister of greenery, the high square-cut walls of yew shutting out everything but the sky. What would some of us give for such a retreat as this! an ideal of perfect tranquillity and isolation from the outer world that might have satisfied the soul ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... St. John's face without the least apparent fear. Boys sometimes call the little blue-tit Billy Biter, no doubt from personal experience of the sharpness of Mr. Tit's beak. The great tit which we can see under the yew tree in our garden, almost any hour of the day, is very common in the neighbourhood, and I dare say if we look well about us during our walk we ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... destruction of the house, but they did not survive the devastating zeal of Merchant Jack. They were swept away by a pupil of Capability Brown's, who allowed the old walls of the kitchen garden to stand because they were useful for growing fruit, but destroyed walls and terraces and old yew hedges everywhere else, brought the well-treed park into relation, as he thought, with the garden, by means of sunk fences, planted shrubberies, laid down vast lawns, and retired very well pleased ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... down the slope, making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... lives to be many hundred years old. There is a yew-tree in England that is known to be over two thousand ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... father, and why was she so frankly anxious to know about my love affairs? These were the two questions which pressed for an answer. So out we went together into the sweet coast-land air, the sweeter for the gale of the night before, and we walked through the old yew-lined paths, and out into the park, and so round the castle, looking up at the gables, the grey pinnacles, the oak-mullioned windows, the ancient wing with its crenulated walls and its meurtriere windows, the modern with its pleasant ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tried it first to ascertain whether it was of the nature of the yew. Surely savages in this region use bows. There must be wood suited for the purpose, so that if I can find it, I ought to be able to make as good a bow as ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... But that layer tells a wonderful history. It is full of stumps of trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... bow? The bow was made in England: Of true wood, of yew wood, The wood of English bows; So men who are free Love the old yew tree And the land ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... great aught foul mean seam moan knot rap bee wrap not loan told cite hair seed night knit made peace in waist bread climb heard sent sun some air tares rain way wait threw fir hart pause would pear fair mane lead meat rest scent bough reign scene sail bier pray right toe yew sale prey rite rough tow steal done bare their creek soul draught four base beet heel but steaks coarse choir cord chaste boar butt stake waive choose stayed cast maze ween hour birth horde aisle core rice male none plane pore fete poll sweet ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... hidden from Juno. And he brought him forth, when the Fates had perfected the horned God, and crowned him with crowns of snakes, whence the thyrsus-bearing Maenads are wont to cover their prey with their locks. O Thebes, thou nurse of Semele, crown thyself with ivy, flourish, flourish with the verdant yew bearing sweet fruit, and be ye crowned in honor of Bacchus with branches of oak or pine, and adorn your garments of spotted deer-skin with fleeces of white-haired sheep,[6] and sport in holy games with the insulting wands, straightway shall all the earth dance, when ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... length around a buttressed corner and so on to the yew-lined drive that led to the front of the house. The Gothic archway gaped wide to the spring sunshine. Olga came swiftly to it, and there ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Ambiorix, since, being now worn out by age, he was unable to endure the fatigue either of war or flight, having cursed Ambiorix with every imprecation, as the person who had been the contriver of that measure, destroyed himself with the juice of the yew tree, of which there is a great abundance in ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... "I wish no strangers here. Even now there are too many strangers about." He looked round as if he expected those strangers of whom the priest had spoken to appear suddenly from behind the yew hedges which stretched away, enclosing Catherine Nagle's charming garden, to the left of the plateau on which stood the ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... organ. Finn remarked her fine voice with sincere approval. Like all hounds, he detested a sharp, high, or yapping cry. A few seconds later Desdemona came to a standstill beside the stem of a starveling yew-tree, and just below the crest of the Down. Her muzzle was thrust into an opening in the steep side of the Down, over which there hung a thatch of furze. But though her head entered the opening, her shoulders could not pass it and there ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... a Garland on my Hearse of the dismal yew; Maidens, Willow branches bear; say I died true: My Love was false, but I was firm from my hour of birth; Upon my buried ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... shaggy limb, 185 Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet formed with care, A cubit's length in measure due; The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, 190 Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave, And, answering Lomond's breezes deep, Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep. The Cross, thus formed, he held on high, 195 With wasted hand and haggard eye, And strange and mingled feelings woke; While his anathema ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Bend-the-Bow, concerning that same vaulted apartment. So help me Heaven, as there is nought in it but some merchandises which I will gladly part with to you—one hundred yards of Lincoln green to make doublets to thy men, and a hundred staves of Spanish yew to make bows, and a hundred silken bowstrings, tough, round, and sound—these will I send thee for thy good-will, honest Diccon, an thou wilt keep silence about the vault, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott |
