"Sedge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a bank of beautiful shrubs; white-beam with its great silver-backed leaves, and mountain-ash, and oak; and below them cliff and crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of crown-ferns and wood-sedge; while through the shrubs he could see the stream sparkling, and hear it murmur on the white pebbles. He did not know that it was ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... it shall please Allah to abate the waters. Our lucky star was in the ascendant; we reached Wad N'fiss at eleven o'clock to find its waters low and clear. On the far side of the banks we stayed to lunch by the border of a thick belt of sedge and bulrushes, a marshy place stretching over two or three acres, and glowing with the rich colour that comes to southern lands in April and in May. It recalled to me the passage in one of the stately choruses of Mr. Swinburne's Atalanta ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... the work of byre and furrow and sheepfold, and the yield of his lands grew under his wardenship. He brought heavy French cattle to improve the little native breed, and made a garden of fruit trees where once had been only bent and sedge. The thralls wrought cheerfully for him, for he was a kindly master, and the freemen of the manor had no complaint against one who did impartial justice and respected their slow and ancient ways. As for skill in hunting, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... cedar-swamp, or under his hand, when about to grasp with it a ledge of the rocks among which he is clambering, unknowing of the serpent's dens. With clenched teeth, and hair that rustled like the sedge-grass, I rose and woke up the obedient gas, which flashed tremulously on the scales of an enormous rattlesnake coiled round the mice's cage, tightening his folds as he whizzed his infernal warning, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... island with a white, sandy beach, and people, dressed all in pure white, walking hand in hand. The setting sun shone on the golden roof of a colonnade, where white fires burnt in sacred sacrificial vessels; and the green island was spanned by a rainbow, the colour of which was rose-red and sedge-green. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... discovered in the ocean world. The richest treasures of Davy Jones's Locker lie open to view, as the boat glides through the ever-changing scenery mirrored in the transparent sea. Opalescent berries resemble heaps of pearls, and the lemon stalks of marine sedge gleam like wedges of gold in the crystalline depths. The long oars detach pinnacles of coral like tongues of flame, and a cargo of seaweed, shells, and anemones, fills the boat as each enchanted grotto contributes a quota of treasure trove, but the vivid colouring ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... And his robes of rank glitter like the young sedge. Do I not think of you? But I am afraid of this officer, and ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... summer rain on grass and bush and hedge, Reddening the road and deepening the green On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge; Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen But dimly on the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... beyond it, the browner peat, or deep fen; and among it, dark velvet alder beds, long lines of reed-rond, emerald in spring, and golden under the autumn sun; shining river-reaches; broad meres dotted with a million fowl, while the cattle waded along their edges after the rich sedge-grass, or wallowed in the mire through the hot summer's day. Here and there, too, upon the far horizon, rose a tall line of ashen trees, marking some island of firm rich soil. Here and there, too, as at Ramsey and Crowland, the huge ashes ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... name of the Egyptian papu, is a kind of sedge growing 10 ft. high, with a soft triangular stem, the pith of which is easily split into ribbons, found still in Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, &c.; the pith ribbons were the paper of the ancient Egyptians, of the Greeks after Alexander, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... But there are other aliens of older settlement amongst us, aliens of American origin which nevertheless arrived in Britain, in all probability, long before Columbus ever set foot on the low basking sandbank of Cat Island. Such is the jointed pond-sedge of the Hebrides, a water-weed found abundantly in the lakes and tarns of the Isle of Skye, Mull and Coll, and the west coast of Ireland, but occurring nowhere else throughout the whole expanse of Europe or Asia. How did it get there? Clearly its seeds ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... From unseen places birds began to sing—the wheatear in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like vast spiders' webs over the grass; sheep ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... at eve I love to saunter Where the sedge sighs drearily, By entangled hidden footpaths, Love! and then ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... for the frog. The day was hot; Dexter's hand was hotter still; and though there was the deliciously cool gurgling river close at hand, with plenty of sedge, and the roots of water grasses, where it might hide and enjoy its brief span of life, it was a prisoner; and if frogs can think and know anything about the chronicles of their race, it was thinking of ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... rocks or becoming buried in snowdrifts. The sun by day and the stars by night were for him both clock and compass, and if these failed him he directed his homeward course by observing how the cotton-grass or withered sedge ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... V; at times the more melodious note of a trumpeter swan; or from the top of a tall cottonwood, or cypress, the sharp saw-filing shriek of the white-headed eagle, angered by some stray creature coming too close, and startling it from its slumbers. Below, out of the swamp sedge, rises the mournful cry of the quabird—the American bittern—and from the same, the deep sonorous bellow of that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... sport In yonder pool, and with their ponderous horns Scatter its tranquil waters, while the deer, Couched here and there in groups beneath the shade Of spreading branches, ruminate in peace. And all securely shall the herd of boars Feed on the marshy sedge; and thou, my bow, With slackened string, enjoy ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... of this landscape a large lake opens to the view. Its aspect is sombre and sad—its dark, turbid waters scarce reflecting the stars that shine so brilliantly over it; while the waves beating against its sedge-encircled shores, utter ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... deer looked at him from sedge, furry ears forward; stamped, winded him, and, not frightened very much, trotted into the dwarf willows, halting once or twice to ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge:[45-35] And the rain poured down from one black cloud: The Moon was at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "Slight, of leaves and strips of flags" (Gould); "of sedge and grass, rarely found," (Yarrell). ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... vision, a flower of her kin forsaken, Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave's edge, Surely by no shore else, but here on the bank storm-shaken, Perdita, bright as a dew-drop engilt of the sun on the sedge. Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her Outcast, fair as a fairy, the child of a far-off king: And over the babe-flower gently the head of a pastoral elder Bowed, compassionate, hoar ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... very plain and clean, with lots of white paint, and very difficult to play in. So we were out a good deal. It was seaside, so, of course, there was the beach, and besides that the marsh—big green fields with sheep all about, and wet dykes with sedge growing, and mud, and eels in the mud, and winding white roads that all look the same, and all very interesting, as though they might lead to almost anything that you didn't expect. Really, of course, they lead to Ashford and Romney and Ivychurch, and real live ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes I explore amid the bare alders, and the huckleberry bushes, and the withered sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and decayed ferns which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long since, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... "Joe," and, keeping behind banks lest they be seen by young uns, they shamefacedly paddled barefoot—two old men with bare feet and silvery shanks, chuckling and catching crabs, in a salt inlet among rolling hillocks covered with sedge-grass that lisped in the breeze. The grass hollows were filled with quiet and the sound of hovering flies. Beyond was a hill ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... reverend Sire, went footing slow, His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... have been three days at a place called Grez, a pretty and very melancholy village on the plain. A low bridge of many arches choked with sedge; great fields of white and yellow water-lilies; poplars and willows innumerable; and about it all such an atmosphere of sadness and slackness, one could do nothing but get into the boat and out of it ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... highly productive forest land. It has completed the entire cycle of land use. Originally it supported magnificent stands of hardwood timber. This timber was cut and the lands devoted to farming. Poor management and erosion soon depleted the supply of top soil and many areas were abandoned to broom sedge, blackberries and gullies. Because it was close enough to the surface the coal has been removed and the areas replanted to many of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... actually virgin to plow, pillar, axe, or mill-wheel, while others have known only the insulting and mean cultivation of the early immigrants who scratched the surface for cotton a year or two, then carelessly abandoned all to sedge and sassafras, and sauntered on toward Texas: it is thus that these lands are with sadder significance than that of small farming, also ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the Spaniards, but the heavy guns opened fire upon them and swept them off in files as they rushed on, and in the intervals of reloading the cavalry charged into their midst. By this time the Tlascalans had come up, having by order of Cortes bound wreaths of sedge about their heads that they might be the more easily distinguished from the Cholulans, and they fell upon the rear of the wretched townsmen, who, thus harassed on all sides, could no longer maintain their ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... ships at their anchors are frozen, From rudder to sloping chain: Rock-like they rise: the low sloop lies An oasis in the plain. Like reeds here and there, the tall masts bare Upspring: as on the edge Of a lawn smooth-shaven, around the haven The shipping grows like sedge. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... a line of wattled pale Fenced the downland from the vale, Now the sedge was set with reeds Fitter for Arcadian meads, And where I was wont to find Only things of timid kind, Now the Genius of the pool Mocked me from his corner cool. Eyes he had with malice quick, Tufted hair and ears a-prick, And, above ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Seaman, of West Creek village, New Jersey, a boat- builder and an expert shooter of wild-fowl, about the year 1836, conceived the idea of constructing for his own use a low-decked boat, or gunning-punt, in which, when its deck was covered with sedge, he could secrete himself from the wild-fowl while gunning in Barnegat and Little ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... his bidding accomplished, turned to meet Hilarius and the Friar who were now coming slowly across the windswept common. March mists gathered and draped the sluggish river; the dry reeds rattled dismally in the ooze and sedge. Hilarius shivered, and the Friar started ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... E'en the sedge-crowned God ascends From his verdant spring to light, And his raft's direction bends At the goddess' word of might,— While the hours, all gently bound, Nimbly to their duty fly; Rugged trunks are fashioned round By her skilled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I see before me flee 15 A silver spirit's form, like thee, O Leonora, and I sit ...still watching it, Till by the grated casement's ledge It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge 20 Breathes o'er the breezy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... quiet lake, in which, in the months of flowers and fruits, you would not see Indian maidens laving their dusky limbs. The wild duck found no rest in his sunny slumber on the banks of Menemshe, the pokeshawit could no longer hide in the sedge, on the banks of his favourite Quampeche, and the deer, that went to quench his thirst in the Monnemoy, found the unerring arrow of the Indian in ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the inhabitants Calandria, is remarkable, from possessing a song far superior to that of any other bird in the country: indeed, it is nearly the only bird in South America which I have observed to take its stand for the purpose of singing. The song may be compared to that of the Sedge warbler, but is more powerful; some harsh notes and some very high ones, being mingled with a pleasant warbling. It is heard only during the spring. At other times its cry is harsh and far from harmonious. Near Maldonado these birds were tame and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... pleasure 'tis to hedge My temples here with heavy sedge, Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide, Or to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermined root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at my lines the fishes twang? But now away, my hooks, my quills, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud, 320 The Moon was at ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... Meliton made his way along the edge of the wood, and then down hill to a meadow which by degrees turned into a marsh. There was a squelch of water under his feet, and the rusty marsh sedge, still green and juicy, drooped down to the earth as though afraid of being trampled underfoot. Beyond the marsh, on the bank of the Pestchanka, of which the old man had spoken, stood a row of willows, and ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... finished milking we searched about for water. Towards the northeast the clearing narrowed and here we came upon a tiny rill trickling through a fringe of sedge. It came from a clear and abundant spring in a cleft of rock against the sharp up slope which rose there under the pines. At the lower edge of that part of the clearing, near the margin of the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... gracious self-possession she smoothed out the fiber, put it twice, thrice about the sheaf and knotted it, her fingers, cool and moist after their contact with the marsh sedge, touching the sculptor's more ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... dreamt I was a-working in my garden, hard by the celery trenches in the sedge; and I was moaning at my lot, as well I may: and a sort of angel came to me, only he looked dark and sorrowful, and kindly said, 'What would you have, Roger?' I, nothing fearful in my dream, for ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sense for harmony of hue displayed in their composition is marvellous. It would be curious to trace in detail the remnants of classical treatment which may be discerned—Jordan, for instance, pours his water from an urn like a river-god crowned with sedge—or to show what points of ecclesiastical tradition are established these ancient monuments. We find Mariolatry already imminent, the names of the three kings, Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the four evangelists as we now recognise them, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... that you were looking through open air; you find that you are looking through a labyrinth of wire-rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at every five steps. You push on into a bed of strong sedge-like Sclerias, with cutting edges to their leaves. It is well for you if they are only three, and not six feet high. In the midst of them you run against a horizontal stick, triangular, rounded, smooth, green. You take a glance along it right and left, and see no end to it either way, but gradually ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... ail thee Knight at arms Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the Lake And no ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... I'll be thy Jason, thou my golden fleece;— Where painted carpets o'er the meads are hurled, And Bacchus' vineyards overspread the world; Where woods and forests go in goodly green;— I'll be Adonis, thou shalt be Love's Queen;— The meads, the orchards, and the primrose-lanes, Instead of sedge and reed, bear sugar-canes: Thou in those groves, by Dis above, Shalt live with me and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... stopped at the edge of a hollow, where, half covered by sedge rushes and bog plantain, there lay a good-sized pool of clear water, down to which Tom made his way, followed by his companion, and after taking a hearty draught, which was wonderfully clear and refreshing, he began to bathe his cuts and bruises, and rid himself ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen to-day—saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass—saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where they rise to-day. And as the faint light of his course pierced into the dwellings of men, it fell, as now, on the rosy warmth of nestling children; on the haggard waking of sorrow and sickness; on the hasty uprising of the hard-handed ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... house!" Paul Nicholas exclaimed, gazing with a shudder upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant, eye-like windows in a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre along the edge ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... swaths! the ringing wain, The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, All housed within the sleeping farms! The business of the day is done, The last-left haymaker is gone. And from the thyme upon the height, And from the elder-blossom white And pale dog-roses in the hedge, And from the mint-plant in the sedge, In puffs of balm the night-air blows The perfume which the day forgoes. And on the pure horizon far, See, pulsing with the first-born star, The liquid sky above the hill! The evening comes, the fields are still. ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... by without a whimper from the pack. There was not a sound save the eager rustling of the dogs through the sedge and undergrowth. The ground was familiar to Flora, and I watched her with pride as with powerful strides she circled around. Suddenly she paused and flung her head in the air, making a beautiful picture where she stood poised, as if listening. My heart gave a great thump. It was a trick ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... with an old field given up to sedge, its deep rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, Cecile of birds, Camille of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their minds it had never occurred that ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... footsteps died away along the quiet road. The peace of the evening was not broken by the notes of the sedge-warblers or by the voice of the woman in the barge, singing her baby to sleep. It was a sad song she sang. Something about Bill Bailey and how she wanted ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... the sedge by the creek a flight of clamorous killdees Rose from their timorous sleep with piercing and iterant challenge, Wheeled in the starlight, and fled away into distance and silence. White in the vale lay the tents, and beyond them ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (? coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, * swallow, martin, swift, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... directing-post where another road joined it, and on to the less regular ground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene, till it vanished over the furthermost undulation. Beside the pools were occasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few bushes, these forming the only obstructions ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... make their garments of it, and it produces a fine silky flax, superior in appearance to any thing we have, and probably, at least, as strong. It grows every where near the sea, and in some places a considerable way up the hills, in bunches or tufts, with sedge-like leaves, bearing, on a long stalk, yellowish flowers, which are succeeded by a long roundish pod, filled with very thin shining black seeds. A species of long pepper is found in great plenty, but it has little of the aromatic flavour that makes spices valuable; and a tree, much like a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... happiness who looked not for it. There was a green fresh hedge, And willows by the river side, And whistling sedge. ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... them. One, two, four, seven! What a splendid old gobbler last crossed the road, and no guns loaded! And there is the track of as noble a buck as I ever saw: that's where he jumped into the pea-field, and ten to one he's lying now in that patch of sedge. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... in Labrador. In Georgia, the Baltimore oriole places its nest upon the north side of the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes it upon the south or east side, and makes it much thicker and Warner. I have seen one from the South that had some kind-of coarse reed or sedge woven into it, giving it an open-work ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the nutricious seeds, small snail shells, worms and larvae of insects, which they extract from the mud. The habits of the Sora Rail, its thin, compressed body, its aversion to take wing, and the dexterity with which it runs or conceals itself among the grass and sedge, are exactly similar to those of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... vapour of amethyst, rose the mountains; while at my feet, in mid-stream, there were two mills which might have been untouched since Moorish days. There had been no rain for months, the water stood very low, and here and there were little islands of dry yellow sand, on which grew reeds and sedge. In such a spot might easily have wandered the half-naked fisherman of the oriental tale, bewailing in melodious verse the hardness of his lot; since to his net came no fish, seeking a broken pot or ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... night's long labor past, Wildered, faint, he falls at last, Sinking where the causeway's edge Moulders in the slimy sedge, There let every noxious thing Trail its filth and fix its sting; Let the bull-toad taint him over, Round him let mosquitoes hover, In his ears and eyeballs tingling, With his blood their poison mingling, Till, beneath the solar fires, Rankling ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gate. But Phorenice had a coyness lest her engine should be seen before it was completed, and so to screen it she had a vast fire built at the uppermost point where the causeway was broken off, and fed diligently with wet sedge and green wood, so that a great smoke poured out, rising like a curtain that shut out all view. And so though the Priests on the rampart above the gate picked off now and again some of those who tended the fire, they could do ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... thee, knight at arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge is withered from the lake, ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... run Slipping through low green leagues of sedge, An ebbing tide, and a setting sun; A hut and a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... present is no more worthy to enjoy—creations which the floods covered with their secret veils of silver; and now these noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and calls forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and enwreathing tufts of sedge. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... round the gulf was well-grassed, particularly before we crossed the Nicholson; and on the plains and approaches to the rivers and creeks. The large water-holes were frequently surrounded with a dense turf of Fimbristylis (a small sedge), which our horses liked to feed upon. Some stiff grasses made their appearance when we approached the sea-coast, as well on the plains as in the forest. The well-known kangaroo grass (Anthisteria) ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... barns, and straggling orchards. Below the plateau a wide marsh extended, intersected by crooked creeks, which gnawed into the black earth like worms. A rim of sea bordered the tongue of the marsh, but it was too far off to add life to the scene. The sedge, giving up all hope of being moistened by the salt waves, had died in great circles, which looked like mats of gray hair on some pre-Adamite monster's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... round, upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 115 Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the current seem ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... flying swiftly forward at its own sweet will, brought me into a bight, a bare, desolate-looking country with no vegetation save grass and sedge on the near marshes and stony hills rising up beyond, with others beyond them mounting step by step to a long line of ridges and peaks still covered in ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Union Farm extended almost completely across a large field and was deep enough to hide a horse, but Washington filled it up with trees, stumps, stones, old rails, brush and dirt, so that scarcely a trace of it was left. In places one comes upon old fields that have been allowed to revert to broom sedge, scrub oak and scrub pine. One is astonished at the amount that has never been cleared at all. Only by the most careful husbandry could such an estate be kept productive. It never could be made to yield ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the livelong day, The livelong day, We beat afoot the northward way We had travelled times before. The sun-blaze burning on our backs, Our shoulders sticking to our packs, By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks We skirted sad Sedge-Moor. ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... his twentieth year, he was sheltered from the heat and rain in a tiny cabin, which he had woven of rush and sedge. Afterwards he built a little cell, which remains to this day, four feet wide and five feet high—that is, lower than his own stature—and somewhat longer than his small body needed, so that you would believe ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... science, it must pass through the understanding of the scientist. Or one may say, it is with the thoughts and half thoughts that the walker gathers in the woods and fields, as with the common weeds and coarser wild flowers which he plucks for a bouquet,—wild carrot, purple aster, moth mullein, sedge, grass, etc.: they look common and uninteresting enough there in the fields, but the moment he separates them from the tangled mass, and brings them indoors, and places them in a vase, say of some choice glass, amid artificial things,—behold, how beautiful! ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... hundred and twelve, and one hundred and sixty bushels per acre are reported to have been raised in the county, in 1849. The yield increases from year to year. A general and rapid improvement of the State is in progress, and in nothing is this seen more clearly than in the corn crop. Mossy "old sedge" fields, which have been laid out for years, are broken up, and will yield, if it be a good season, from five to ten bushels per acre; fence them, lime them with twenty to thirty bushels, and seed the oat crop ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... down to west, and crossed our frontage here. Seen from above they specked the water-shine As will a flight of swallows toward dim eve, Descending on a smooth and loitering stream To seek some eyot's sedge. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... which can even now be witnessed in the Affej and Montefik marshes—that is to say, reed cabins, supported by the tall stems of the growing plants bent into arches, and walled with mats composed of flags or sedge. Houses of this description last for forty or fifty years and would satisfy the ideas of a primitive race. When greater permanency began to be required, palm-beams might take the place of the reed supports, and wattles plastered ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... vassal vow'd; but, ah! how seldom pledges Given to the dying, to the dead, are held! The Esquire reach'd the shore, where sand and sedge is O'er melancholy hills, by paths of eld; Treeless and houseless was the prospect round, Rock-strewn and boisterous the lake before; A Charon-shape in a skiff a-ground— The pilgrim turned, and left the ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... damm'st it up, the more it burns; The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage: And so by many winding nooks he strays, With willing sport, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... On the seaward hedge The wild hops, hanging bright, Gleam as a foam-spray flung on sedge From a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... feet high. Through the reefs the doomed ship stole like a hunted thing. Only one man kept his head clear and his hand to the helm—the lieutenant whom all the rest had thrown out of the cabin. The island seemed absolutely treeless, covered only with sedge and shingle and grass. The tide began to toss the ship about so that the sick were rolled from their berths. Night came with a ghostly moonlight silvering the fret of a seething sea that seemed to ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... stretch of lowland broken here and there by slight elevations. Much of the plain was in forest, but in some places the waist-deep corn was waving, and in others the wheat stood in shocks. There were marshes and boggy green meadows and old fields of pine and broom sedge. Several roads could be seen. They all ran into a long and low cloud of smoke. It veiled the northern horizon, and out of it came the thunder. First appeared dull orange flashes, then, above the low-lying thickness, the small white expanding cloud made by the bursting shell, then to ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the bolder bank where the pines bent heavy heads over the water, the holly crowded close to the shore, and pale tinted reeds made border at the water's edge. Now in rounding a curve, we passed close to the cypress wood fringed with bush and sedge. Delicate brown festoons of vines hung from the branches; and, high out of reach, mats of mistletoe clung. It seemed one with our mood and our fancy when two round yellow eyes stared out of the shadows, two ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... ruined cottage set in an ancient cherry-orchard, or the sailing of paper boats, or even the mere delight of lying on the grass and listening above the murmur of insects to the water nagging at the sedge. So much indeed was there to beguile them that, if after sunset the Pool had not been a haunted place, they would have lingered there till nightfall. Sometimes indeed they did miscalculate the distance they had come and finding themselves likely to be caught by twilight they would hurry with ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Far and nigh All slept, the cattle and the fowls of air. Stretched on a bank, beneath the cold, clear sky, Lay good AEneas, fain at length to share Late slumber, troubled by the war with care. When, 'twixt the poplars, where the fair stream flows, With azure mantle, and with sedge-crowned hair, The aged Genius of the place uprose, And, standing by, thus spake, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... looked, Of twenty summers. At her left, a child, In shining draperies, headed like a star, Her maiden babe, a double April old, Aglaia slept. We sat: the Lady glanced: Then Florian, but not livelier than the dame That whispered 'Asses' ears', among the sedge, 'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that's fair,' Said Cyril. 'Oh hush, ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these tender contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room, if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... fitted with anchors made from ebony or some other heavy wood, having occasionally a large piece of stone fastened to them, to insure their sinking. The cables to which they are attached are generally of a black rush, like sedge, or of bamboo; but in the event of a gale, I should say that their crews had great need never to embark in these frail shells, except when well assured of being at peace ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... and creep beneath it. This particular step of a short flight running from the landing into a garret is, upon closer inspection, indeed movable, and beneath gapes a dark cavity about five feet square, on the floor of which still remains the piece of sedge matting whereon a certain Father Wall rested his aching limbs a few days prior to his capture and execution in August, 1679. The unfortunate man was taken at Rushock Court, a few miles away where he was traced after leaving Harvington. There is a communication ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... only a natural balanced part of his body. Our way at first lay along Thibert Creek, now on gravel benches, now on bed rock, now close down on the bouldery edge of the stream. Above the mines the stream is clear and flows with a rapid current. Its banks are embossed with moss and grass and sedge well mixed with flowers—daisies, larkspurs, solidagos, parnassia, potentilla, strawberry, etc. Small strips of meadow occur here and there, and belts of slender arrowy fir and spruce with moss-clad roots grow close ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... shutting them faithfully, and journeying on through miles of fragrant lane and fields of young cotton and corn, and stretches of wood where the squirrel scampered before them and reaches of fallow grounds still wet with dew, and patches of sedge, and old fields grown up with thickets of young trees; now pushing their horses to a rapid gallop, where they were confident of escaping notice, and now ambling leisurely, where the eyes of men afield, or of women at home, followed them with rustic scrutiny; or some straggling Confederate ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of the bayou, as motionless as a sleeping snake under its misty covert—to continue the poetical language or thought. The ripples ran frightened and shivering into the rooty thicknesses of the sedge-grown banks, startling the little birds bathing there into darting to the nearest, highest rush-top, where, without losing their hold on their swaying, balancing perches, they burst into all sorts of incoherent songs, in their excitement to divert attention from the near-hidden nests: bird ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... curiosity lessening the fatigue. He went, too, to the Lycian[46] cities, and the Carians, that border upon Lycia. Here he sees a pool of water, clear to the {very} ground at the bottom; here there are no fenny reeds, no barren sedge, no rushes with their sharp points. The water is translucent; but the edges of the pool are enclosed with green turf, and with grass ever verdant. A Nymph dwells {there}; but one neither skilled in hunting, nor accustomed to bend the bow, nor to contend in speed; the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... ancient fortifications, I found on my last visit in 1910, was the fine gate, the "Porte de Bruxelles," with a small section of the walls, all reflected in an old moat now overgrown with moss and sedge grass. There were, too, quaint vistas of the old tower of Our Lady of Hanswyk and a number of arched bridges along the banks of the yellow Dyle, which flows sluggishly through the ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... hundred crevices, on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and streams spouted out of the mouths and nostrils of stone monsters, and fell in glistening drops; while other rivulets, that had run wild, came leaping from one rude step to another, over stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with sedge, because, in a Century of their wild play, Nature had adopted the Fountain of Trevi, with all its elaborate devices, for her own. Finally, the water, tumbling, sparkling, and dashing, with joyous haste and never-ceasing murmur, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mottled sand-bird runneth up and down, Amongst the creaking sedge, Along the crusted beach; The time-stained houses of the sea-walled town Seem tottering on ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... a rose's heart And scattered her petals far apart. Driven before the churlish blast Some in the meadow brook were cast, Or fell in the tangle of the sedge; Some were impaled on the thorn of the hedge; But one was caught on my dear love's breast Where long ago ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... than two feet deep. We ascended about half a mile, the current being very strong, from six to eight miles an hour, and quite far enough to observe the nature of the stream at its embouchure. We could see that it widened and spread out in a myriad of channels, rushing by isolated clumps of sedge and matete grass; and that it had the appearance of a swamp. We had ascended the central, or main channel. The western channel was about eight yards broad. We observed, after we had returned to the bay, that the easternmost channel was about six yards broad, and about ten feet deep, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... flashed and swirled, between green boughs below, clear coffee-brown from last night's rain. Some miles up the turnpike road he went, and then away to the right, through the ash-woods of Trebooze, up by the rill which drips from pool to pool over the ledges of grey slate, deep-bedded in dark sedge, and broad bright burdock leaves, and tall angelica, and ell-broad rings and tufts of king, and crown, and lady-fern, and all the semi-tropic luxuriance of the fat western soil, and steaming western woods; out into the boggy moor at the glen head, all fragrant with the gold-tipped ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... and all in Thee, Oh still"—He spoke, and lo, the charm accurst Fled whence it came, and the broad barrier burst! A vain illusion! (such as mocks the eyes Of fearful men, when mountains round them rise From less than nothing [Footnote 4]) nothing now beheld, But scatter'd sedge—repelling, and repell'd! And once again that valiant company Right onward came, ploughing the Unknown Sea. Already borne beyond the range of thought, With Light divine, with Truth immortal fraught, From world ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... grown to their full height and turned from green to yellow. The stalks, stripped of their tops and blades, were bent by the weight of their ears. There was a whispering of breezes in the sedge-fields, in the long rows of brown-bolled cotton plants, among the fodder-stacks, and in the forest that stretched from the main road up the mountain-side. It was the season in which the rugged landscape appeared most brilliant; when the kalmia ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... dying in exquisite beauty. Long bands of pale green light widened up from the west. Along the hither slope of a ridge someone was burning off his sedge-grass. The slender red lines of fire, beautiful after passion's sort, but dimming the field's fine gold, were just reaching the crest to die by a road-side. The objects of his search were ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... their wonted reddish graine. They feed on salt vnmarchantable Pilcherd, small fish, called Brit, and Barne, Tag-wormes, Lugges, little Crabs, & the liuers of beasts: the rest deuoure their meat, but the Millets content themselues with sucking it, and chawing of the sedge. Euery euening they come to a place certain in the pond, for receiuing their allowed pittance, and in Summer, approche very neere, and in the top of the water plainly discouer themselues. They were first ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... all came recollections of the college, the old, dank convent, that extended as far as the town ramparts; the two courtyards with their huge plane trees; the slimy sedge-covered pond, where they had learned to swim, and the class-rooms with dripping plaster walls on the ground floor; then the refectory, with its atmosphere constantly poisoned by the fumes of dish-water; the dormitory of the little ones, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Rona; and the Beehive Cells, in Eilan na Naoimh (Nun's Island.) These old Strathearn churches would seldom be larger than 12 feet wide by 20 long, built of undressed land stones (like a field dyke), and thatched with heather, bracken, or sedge. The great storehouse of reliable material with minimum of controversy relative to the early Christianity of Scotland is Warren's Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church. (Clarendon ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... for ruffian winds to shake; And as the bold intruders press around, At once she starts, and rises with a bound: With bristles rais'd the sudden noise they hear, And ludicrously wild, and wing'd with fear, The herd decamp with more than swinish speed, And snorting dash thro' sedge, and rush, and reed: Through tangling thickets headlong on they go, Then stop, and listen for their fancied foe; The hindmost still the growing panic spreads, Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds, Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap: ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary's silent lake; Thou know'st it well,—nor fen, nor sedge, Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver sand Marks where the water ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
