"Yew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when evening 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 ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Wonderful Year there is a description of a charnel-house pavement strewed with withered rosemary, hyacinth, cypress, and yew. During the Plague rosemary was in such demand for funerals that, says Dekker, what 'had wont to be sold for twelvepence an armfull went now at six shillings a handfull.' Certainly a remarkable rise. What the price was in 1531 we know not; but in an account of the funeral ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the beach. This piece of 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. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... other side. To speak well, when I despise both the cause and the 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... raised their pretty heads to look, and did not seem startled at all. And after a long stretch of turf they passed under the heaped-up heavy masses of lime-trees and came into a rose-garden, bordered with thick, close-cut yew hedges, and lying red and pink and green and white in the sun, like a giant's ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... in one of the midland counties. The rectory stood near one end of the village, which was like a great many other country villages. There were farm-houses, with their stack-yards and clusters of out-buildings, with their yew-trees and apple-orchards. Cottages, with low bulging white-washed walls and thatched roofs, were interspersed among others of a more spruce and modern build, with slated roofs, and neat little gardens. Then there were two or three shops which sold all things ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... considered sub-alpine. It is common on Hattu, and the oaks there present a forlorn appearance after rain with funereal mosses dripping with moisture hanging from their trunks. The firs, Picea morinda, with its grey tassels, and Abies Pindrow with its dark green yew-like foliage, succeed the blue pine. Picea may be said to range from 8000 to 10,000 feet, and the upper limit of Abies is from 1000 to 2000 feet higher. These splendid trees are unfortunately of small commercial value. The yew, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... spoil In ocean-smelling 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... house was a yard, where chickens, turkeys, and guinea- fowls, were kept; and in the front, looking towards the west, was laid out a fine garden, well provided with evergreens, such as holly, yew, and pine-trees, and amongst these, also, many birch and ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... spotted eagle sailing slowly towards Ballygawley, and he cried out: 'You, too, eagle of Ballygawley, are old, and your wings are full of gaps, and I will put you and your ancient comrades, the Pike of Dargan Lake and the Yew of the Steep Place of the Strangers into my rhyme, that there may be a curse on ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... 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 to the Countrey men to bring some. Your Agent ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... cherry, which 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 cherry ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... moss like velvet, and round the doors and windows were trained some of the many kinds of evergreen vines which abound here. Most of them also had a trim courtyard before their doors, planted with laurel and holly and box, and sometimes a yew cut into some fantastic shape. The whole appearance of the villages was neat and venerable; like some aged matron who, with all her wrinkles, her stooping form, and grey locks, preserves the dignity of cleanliness in her ancient but ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... ascent: sweet songsters near Warble in shade their wild-wood melody: Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear. Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock 5 That on green plots o'er precipices browze: From the deep fissures of the naked rock The Yew-tree bursts! Beneath its dark green boughs (Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white) Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats, 10 I rest:—and now have gain'd the topmost site. Ah! what a luxury ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sculptors. The general feeling of it is refinement, combined with great strength. It is fully deserving of monopolizing a fine setting of dignified architecture, so richly emphasized by some of the finest old yew trees ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... to the woodland those gleanings of the strife, And smote down a great-boled oak-tree, the mightiest they might find, And thereto with bonds of iron the Volsungs did they bind, And left them there on the wood-lawn, mid the yew-trees' compassing, And went back by the light of the moon to the dwelling ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... days, established a chapel in the neighbourhood, of which no vestige was now visible, though the churchyard which surrounded it was still, as upon the present occasion, used for the interment of particular persons. One or two shattered yew-trees still grew within the precincts of that which had once been holy ground. Warriors and barons had been buried there of old, but their names were forgotten, and their monuments demolished. The only sepulchral memorials which remained were the upright headstones which mark ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the white clouds and the necks move over them 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: The ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... of vertue, and be blest For ever, whilst that here I wretched rest Thus to my self; yet grant me leave to dwell In kenning of this Arbor; yon same dell O'retopt with morning Cypress and sad Yew Shall be my Cabin, where I'le early rew, Before the Sun hath kist this dew away, The hard uncertain chance which Fate doth ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... nuthin' to me"—the reference was to the passengers. "They wouldn't pay for the harse's feed. I work for the Duchy, I do, which is almost the same as being in Guvverment, ain't it? I remember yew, thow—because yew gave me ten shellens for driving yew to the Central hotel last night." Mr. Crows cast a quick glance at his fare to see how he took this artful reminder of his munificence. "But as for their bobs—" He spat into the night in order to express ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... 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 ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... man, imagining it was the same night and that he was with his companion, immediately asked if it were not better to go home. He was offered some food, which he began to eat; but he had no sooner done so than he mouldered away. A similar tradition attaches to a certain yew-tree near Mathafarn in the parish of Llanwrin. One of two farm-servants was lost at that spot, and found again, a year after, dancing in a fairy-circle. On being dragged out he was asked if he did not feel hungry. "No," ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the garden for his favourite relaxation of trimming the box-tree borders to the plots. A sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far away at sea; and what looked like a tall man by the gate at dusk was a yew bush cut into a quaint and attenuated shape. There is no such solitude in country places now as there was in ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... times. Aliens residing in England were forbidden the use of this weapon—a jealous precaution showing the great importance attached to its possession. The usual length of the bow—which was made of yew, witch-hazel, ash, or elm—was about six feet; and the arrow, about half that length. Arrows were made of ash, feathered with part of a goose's wing, and barbed with iron or steel. In the reign of Edward III., a painted bow cost 1 shilling and 6 pence, a white bow, 1 shilling; a sheaf of steel-tipped ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... seemed to melt away—David and Canon Aylwin strolling off together—and soon Lucy found herself alone. She sat down in a seat round which curved a yew hedge, and whence there was a somewhat wide view over a bare, hilly country, with suggestions everywhere of factory life in the hollows, till on the southwest it rose and melted into the Derbyshire moors. Autumn—late autumn—was on all the reddening woods ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... presently, after the wood was ended, 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 ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... crews 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
... 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
... plan to stick up a death's-head and cross-bones here and there, and to split up old coffin-lids for your setting-sticks, and get old Mowlders, the sexton, to bury your roots, and cover them in with a "dust to dust," and so forth, and plant a yew tree in the middle, and stick those bits of painted board, that look so woefully like gravestones, all round it, and then let old Tamar prowl about for a ghost? I assure you, Radie, I think you, all to nothing, the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 staircases, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... attractive spot in the whole town, the old family burying-ground of the Starks, in which are interred all the deceased members of this remarkable family, from the Revolutionary Major Caleb and his wife down. Here, with grim, towering Kearsarge standing ever like a sentinel, rests under the yew-trees the dust of this ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... woodcuts, the publishing of which, he says, made an epoch in English book illustration, importing a new element to which he finds it difficult to give a name. "I still adore," he says, "the lovely, wild, irresponsible moon-face of Oriana, with a gigantic mailed archer kneeling at her feet in the yew-wood, and stringing his fatal bow; the strange beautiful figure of the Lady of Shalott, when the curse comes over her, and her splendid hair is floating wide, like the magic web; the warm embrace of Amy and her cousin ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... 'gingerbread boy," cried Phronsie, running eagerly along with a particularly ugly looking specimen of a cake figure in her hand, "is the be-yew-tifullest, isn't it, Polly?" ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... him on an ivy leaf on the ground," said Babs, "under the yew-tree down there. I can find him ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... shaded and occupies a small hill with the Loddon flowing partly round it, then taking its swift way through the village. Miss Mitford's monument is a plain, almost an ugly, granite cross, standing close to the wall, shaded by yew, elm, and beech trees, and one is grateful to think that if she never had her reward when living she has found at any ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... 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 ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Mordaunt stood by an open window in Mrs. Halliday's drawing-room at Whitelees. A smell of stocks came in, and across the lawn, rows of dahlias, phlox, and autumn lilies made a belt of glowing color against a dark yew hedge. The hedge was neatly clipped and the turf was very smooth. By and by Mordaunt turned and glanced about the room, which he knew well. Whitelees was modern, and although Mrs. Halliday sometimes grumbled about her poverty, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... themselves into trouble; somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is precisely what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. They are supposed to have a President. He lives by himself in the yew tree outside the morning-room window. What I want to know is what he is supposed to be good for. This is the sort of thing I want him to look into. I would like him to be worming underneath one evening when those two birds are tidying up: perhaps he would do something ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... They drifted nearer to the bank, and Helena perceived, at the end of a little creek, a magnificent group of yew trees, of which the lower branches were almost in the water. Behind them, and to the side of them, through a gap in the wood, the moonlight found its way, but they themselves stood against the faint light, superbly dark, and impenetrable, black water at their feet. Buntingford ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Indians so deeply interested in a game they were playing, that they took no notice of us. It was played with slender round sticks, about six inches long, made of yew wood, so exquisitely polished that it had a gloss like satin. Some of the sticks were inlaid with little bits of rainbow pearl, and I saw one on which the figure of a fish was very skilfully represented. It is quite incomprehensible, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... grounds a goodly mansion, which held this pleasant room. It was always light and cheerful and warm, for the three windows down to the broad gravel-walk before it faced south; and though the lawn was darkened just in front of them by two magnificent yew-trees, the atmosphere of the room itself, in its silent, sunny loftiness, was at once gay and solemn to my small imagination and senses,—much as the interior of Saint Peter's of Rome has been since to them. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... short Wand, twenty-one inches long, tipped with gold at the largest end and silver or copper at the other, is very powerful. Next to these costly articles are Wands with a gold or copper core, a wire, in fact, cased with ebony, boxwood, rosewood, cedar or sandalwood. English yew also serves the purpose; so does almond wood. Simpler, less expensive, and almost as effective, are Wands made of witch-hazel. In fact, apart from the Wands of live ivory, I consider that witch-hazel is as powerful as the golden ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... 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 ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Christmas Eve, to continue 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, that it might not go out ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... and being stopped at one church which would not answer our purpose in any respect, we were at last set down by one which looked authentic; embowered in mossy elms, with a most ancient and goblin yew-tree, an ivy-mantled tower, all perfect as could be. Here, leaning on the old fence, we repeated the Elegy, which certainly applies here as beautifully as language ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... no valour have, But pride) admired his habit, strange and brave, And having raised mine eyes, which wearied were, To understand this sight was all my care. Four snowy steeds a fiery chariot drew; There sat the cruel boy; a threatening yew His right hand bore, his quiver arrows held, Against whose force no helm or shield prevail'd. Two party-colour'd wings his shoulders ware; All naked else; and round about his chair Were thousand mortals: some in battle ta'en, Many were hurt with darts, and many ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Pogis church, and his house, West End Cottage, half a mile distant. The ingredients of his Elegy—actually the greatest, but in his judgment among the least, of his few works—exist all around. "The rugged elm," "the ivy-mantled tower," and "the yew tree's shade," the most specific among the simple "properties" of his little spectacle, are common to so many places that there are several competitors for the honor of having furnished them. The cocks, ploughmen, herds and owls cannot, of course, at this late day be identified. Gray could not have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Floras, painted Mercurys, and Dians with milk-pails. Every yard almost salutes you with some similar absurdity. The hedges are shaped into peacocks, and not unfrequently into ladies and gentlemen dancing a minuet. Pillars of cypress, and pyramids of yew, terminate almost every walk, and if there is an hollow in the garden, it is formed into a muddy pond, in which half a dozen nymphs in stone, are about to plunge. The ill-taste of these statues is not the worst; ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... 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
... India; but he was a narrow ailing man, and his 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 ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... helmet of Cromwell, a most venerable relic. Before the great, cavernous fireplace was piled up on a sled a quantity of yew-tree wood. The rude simplicity of thus arranging it on the polished floor of this magnificent apartment struck me as quite singular. I suppose it is a continuation of some ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... 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 ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... Spearhead fences, yew-tree hedges, Coats of arms no more regilded, Sphinxes gleaming through the thickets.... Creakingly ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... to be an odd crew! There's the old sea-captain that lives in that queer house with the single yew tree and the boarded-up window on the edge of the Heath. He's one of them. He used to come to church about once a quarter and wrote the Rector interminable letters on the meaning of Ezekiel. Then there's the publican—East—who nearly lost ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 beautiful to be real, and he trembled, as he sometimes ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... fields and commons, heaths and unfrequented places, feeding upon worms and insects. In severe weather it approaches our plantations and shrubberies, to feed on the berry of the mistletoe, the ivy, or the scarlet fruit of the holly or the yew; and, should the redwing or the fieldfare presume to partake of these with it, we are sure to hear its voice in clattering and contention with the intruders, until it drives them from the place, though it watches and attends, notwithstanding, to its ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... is why Mine is a better place than yours to lie. This dark old yew tree casts a fuller shade Than any pine; the stream is simply made For keeping bottles cool; and when we've dined I could just wade a bit while you . ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... lighted a fresh cigar, strolled out upon the frozen lawn, and sat down on a rustic seat, under the branches of an old yew tree, from which he had a view of the bay, that here spread out from the foot of the hill ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... of honey, etc. On reaching the mouth of this river we halted for five or six days, when all the other Indians gathered, as was customary, expressly to feast for the dead. All the Indians and children used to go around among the camps and salute one another with the words, "Ne-baw-baw-tche-baw-yew," that is to say, "I am or we are going around as spirits," feasting and throwing food into the fire—as they believe the spirits of the dead take the victuals and eat as they are consumed ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... proclamations in one day, in one of which he advised the people, "Since the vintage was very plentiful, to have their casks well secured at the bung with pitch:" and in another, he told them, "that nothing would sooner cure the bite of a viper, than the sap of the yew-tree." ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... not over prudent to trust to his pilotage; but wiser men have been led by fools. By this time he reached the bottom of the alley, where, turning short on a little parterre of flowers, shrouded from the east and north by a close yew hedge, he found an old man at work without his coat, whose appearance hovered between that of an upper servant and gardener; his red nose and ruffled shirt belonging to the former profession; his hale and sunburnt visage, with his green apron, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... described in Progress Report No. 2. Its utilization is of doubtful practibility, on account of its distance from navigable water, and the obstructions of the streams flowing therein. There is an occasional alder bottom, hemlock is quite common, bull pine is found in a few localities, and yew, dog-wood and crab-apple occur upon all the islands. There is a dense undergrowth of salal, whortle, salmon, raspberry and other bushes, ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... Cold grew the foggy morn, the day was brief, Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf; The dew dwelt ever on the herb; the woods Roar'd with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods: All green was vanish'd, save of pine and yew, That still displayed their melancholy hue; Save the green holly with its berries red, And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread. To public views my Lord must soon attend; And soon the ladies—would they leave their friend? The time was fix'd—approach'd—was ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... 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 ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of the stately house. Great timbers deeply carved adorned the outer walls, and the whole building was rich in those embellishments which grace the buildings of that period. A fine terrace ran the whole length of the south front, and was bounded at either side by a thick hedge of yew. Stone steps led down into a terraced garden upon which much care had been bestowed, and which in summer was bright with all the flowers then known and cultivated in this country. Even in gloomy winter there was more of order and trimness than was often found in such places, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the mourner should get "wet on's feet," and vaults numbered like warehouses, where "parties may bring their own minister," and be buried with any form, or no form, if they like it better. No, give us the village churchyard with its sombre yew-trees, among which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... love the "beautiful lady," and every man and woman seems almost to worship her; and if you heard the anecdotes I have heard there, you would not wonder at it. "Think o' they R'yal Highnesses"—they would say—"making o' things wi' their own 'ands fer sich as us! Did yew ever heerd tell o' sich, says I; none o' yer frames and frimmirks (airs and graces) wi' they." And then they would go on with their "says I" and "says she," and tell you all about summer flower shows for villagers, treats on Royal ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... he passed under the poplar tree the gray squirrel darted gaily along a bough over his head, but he did not look up, and a minute later Gabriella saw him cross the street and vanish beyond the pointed yew tree in the yard ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... no earthly fire, as though a god had arrived, and that was the sign. Miss Muffet, whose profile, having the breeze and the surprise of the sun in her hair, was dedicated with a quivering and aureate nimbus, pulled aside the brush of a small yew, and exclaimed; for there, neatly set in the angle of the bough, was a brown cup with three blue eggs in it. I saw all this, and tried my best to get back to it; but I was not there. I saw it clearly—the late shower glittered on my ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... they were doing when, breakfast being over next morning, Mr. Pawle conducted him across the square to the old four-square churchyard, and for half an hour walked him up one path and down another and in and around the ancient yew-trees and gravestones. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... some trifle exaggerated by quibbling. But you will go down to the Academy[556] to run beneath the sacred olives with some virtuous friend of your own age, your head encircled with the white reed, enjoying your ease and breathing the perfume of the yew and of the fresh sprouts of the poplar, rejoicing in the return of springtide and gladly listening to the gentle rustle of the plane-tree and the elm. If you devote yourself to practising my precepts, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... mournful cry 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 the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... had a Chinese indifference to the necessary end of all things, which prompted him to use an aged yew tree in his garden, that had long given him shade but must now be felled, as material for his coffin. This coffin he placed at the foot of his bed as a chest for clothes until its proper purpose ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... snow I rode there after dark, tied my horse to a tree, crept up that nut-walk—you know it?—and round by the east terrace to the porch, and laid my valentine on the door-step, and clanged the bell, and hid behind the yew-fence till the man came out to get it. Then I went home. And last thing at night there was a clatter-clatter at the door at Redford, and I dashed out to catch whoever it was—her brother she sent—but wasn't quite smart enough. If only I'd seen ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... gardens, forty four acres in extent, we find ourselves on broad walks laid out with mathematical regularity, and edged by noble masses of yew, holly, horse-chestnut, etc. almost as rectangular and circular. We are here struck with the great advantage derived in landscape gardening from the rich variety of large evergreens possible in the climate of Britain. The holly, unknown as an outdoor plant in this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... my Lords, Soldiers will not flye indeede; I have seene the day, I could have crackt a tree of yew, made my bowstring whisper in mine eare in[249] the twang, tost my pike lustilye. Tis since the siedge of Parthia: bith-'mas a great while; I was lustie then at the service was done there, yet I love the discourse. Come my Lord, I chuse your companye, leave ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... bunches of 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 quiet afternoons when ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... frightened him more than anything else. He ran along the corridors, down more stairs, past more open doors and out through the back kitchen, along the moss-grown walk by the brick wall and so round by the three yew trees and the mounting block to the stable-yard. And there was no one there. Neither coachman nor groom nor stable-boys. And there was no one in the stables, or the coach-house, or the harness-room, or ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... the sunny English garden that next I visited. It, too, was terraced and had fountains, but the water in these fountains sparkled in the sun, and the cool dampness of the Italian garden was lacking. On the terrace were occasional closely-trimmed yew trees, or box trees clipped in odd shapes. A curving walk, edged with laurel, led to the ivy-walled inner garden. Here, in the full sun and warmth, grew, not the delicate rose bush of my Italian garden, but sturdy, bold rose trees, and apple trees, above snowdrops, ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... pretty tombs in this churchyard; perhaps its beauty consisted in its extreme neatness, and the flowers that the vicar, Mr. Myrvin, took so much pleasure in carefully preserving. One lowly grave, beneath a large and spreading yew, was never passed unnoticed. A plain marble stone denoted that there lay one, who had once been the brightest amid the bright, the brilliant star of a lordly circle. The name, her age, and two simple verses were there inscribed; but around that humble ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... history, who will measure imaginative work by their own lack of any imaginative faculty, and will hold up their ink-stained hands in horror if some honest gentleman, who has never been farther than the yew-trees of his own garden, pens a fascinating book of travels like Sir John Mandeville, or, like great Raleigh, writes a whole history of the world, without knowing anything whatsoever about the past. To excuse themselves ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... wild tiger-lilies and columbines and Mariposa lilies! What berries and queen's-cup and chalice-cup and bird's-bill! There was trillium, too, although it was not in bloom, and devil's-club, a plant which stings and sets up a painful swelling. There were yew trees, those trees which the Indians use for making their bows, wild white rhododendron and spirea, cottonwood, white pine, hemlock, Douglas spruce, and white fir. Everywhere there was mountain-ash, the berries beloved of bears. And high up on the mountain there was always heather, beautiful ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... With Spanish yew so strong, (p. 420) Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpent stung, Piercing the weather. None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And, like true English hearts, Stuck ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image of an enemy transfixed by bodkins for the torment of that enemy; the belief in the were-wolf (one of the oldest of Roman traditions); the association of the yew tree with mourning and the ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... ripens at all seesins; the appels and the Plumbs As Big as my 2 thums; the hayprecocks an peechis, Wot all within our reech is, An we mought pick an heat, paying nothing for the treat. O for the pooty flouers A bloomin at all ours, So that a large Bokay Yew may gether any day Of ev'ry flour that ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... the cortege passed were carefully cleared and sanded; and the inhabitants decorated the fronts of their houses according to their varied taste and means, with drapery, tapestry, colored paper, and some even with garlands of yew-leaves, almost all the shops on the Quai des Orfevres being ornamented with festoons ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 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 ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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 keep ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... garden among the laurels, looked everywhere except above the wall to be sure that he was alone, and at last lit up, only as he raised his eyes in gratitude for the first blissful inhalation to discover that dreadful little boy peeping at him from the crotch in the yew-tree in the next garden. As though God had sent him ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... summer leaves were over and gone, But the ivy and yew were green, When to Bewsey hall came a jovial crew On the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... away, Death, And in sad cypres 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 Did ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... 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; ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... gold to offer, for the injuries to atone, and Hogni also. * * * She then inquired who would go the steeds to saddle, the chariot to drive, on horseback ride, the hawk let fly, arrows shoot from the yew bow? ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... 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 Bromius leads the bands to ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... though the fires of suffering had burnt themselves out, leaving behind them a silent, charred desolation. He took my arm, and together we left the room, passing through the high French windows and along an open terrace until we reached the gardens. We turned down a broad walk bordered by high yew hedges, at the bottom of which was a little gate leading into the park. The air was fragrant with the perfume of violets, and early stocks and hyacinths, mingled every now and then with a more delicate perfume from the greenhouses on the other side of the red-brick wall. How beautiful ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the whole physiognomy of the poem, if I may use the expression, without seeing the spot which it commemorates. I take it for granted that the reader is familiar with it. There are "those rugged elms," and there is "that yew tree's shade." There are "the frail memorials," "with uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked;" there "the name, the years, spelt by the unlettered muse;" and the holy texts strewn round "that teach the rustic moralist to die." There is still "the ivy-mantled ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... Sailing in a Boat at Evening Remembrance of Collins Descriptive Sketches taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps Guilt and Sorrow; or, Incidents upon Salisbury Plain Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, which stands near the lake of Esthwaite, on a desolate part of the shore, commanding a beautiful prospect The Borderers The Reverie of Poor Susan 1798 A Night Piece We are Seven Anecdote for ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... face my fore-wheels took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang horsemen ten feet high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and sleek round-headed maids of honour—blue, black, and glistening—all of clipped yew. Across the lawn—the marshalled woods besieged it on three sides—stood an ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with mullioned windows and roofs of rose-red tile. It was flanked by semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth side, and at their feet a box hedge ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and statues, and cascades, and everything—everything that goes to make a formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... discomposed. Never was such a creature for interpreting the signs of the unseen! Her senses were as discriminating as those of wild animals that have not only to find life but to avoid death by the keenness of their wits. She came out, and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... men to fight the Elector of Hanover's troops. Cameron of Lochiel, Murray of Broughton, and several other leaders of distinction were present; Lord Lovat was attended by many of his own clan, who were armed with dirks, swords, and pistols, and marked by wearing sprays of yew in their bonnets. But the conference broke up without any important result. The leaders embraced each other, drank to Prince Charles's health, and separated. On this occasion Lord Lovat headed that party among ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... daughter, snatched from their friends by some sudden and terrible casuality—were strewn fresh and beauteous flowers, the fragrant offering of a gentle girl, who daily sought that sacred spot to weep over the loved and lost. Near this, beneath a shady yew, was the lowly bed of the poor man's daughter, whose remains ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... 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 and beautiful tree-thing of to-day, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... and I, under shadowy yew, List'ning for Harry's dear step on the path— He always hears it the first of the two, Which gives me a feeling half joy, ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... club was broached. Then we all perceived what a strong interest we felt in the study and use of the bow and arrow. The club was formed immediately, and our thirty members began to discuss the relative merits of lancewood, yew, and greenheart bows, and to survey yards and lawns for suitable spots for setting up targets for ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... in circumference. They stood a little way apart from each other, but the whole formed one group. Mr. Robert Brown has been kind enough to examine the wood: he says it belongs to the fir tribe, partaking of the character of the Araucarian family, but with some curious points of affinity with the yew. The volcanic sandstone in which the trees were embedded, and from the lower part of which they must have sprung, had accumulated in successive thin layers around their trunks; and the stone yet retained the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... him was in the old Yew Avenue in the Priory garden. He was on his way to call at the Red House. She stood on a patch of grass by a rustic seat commanding the vista of yews, and above them, a wilderness of lilacs and laburnums, in full flower. It looked to her like a pathway that led to some exquisite ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... sunset: there was no moon visible, but an irradiance was omnipresent, and showed the muffled yew-tree walks, and the greater trees colossal, mountains overshadowing the land. Here and there, as you went, glimmered daffodils, like the Pleiades half-veiled, and long files of crocuses burned like ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... You will set one round table on the porch, so that if it threatens rain, as it sometimes does, you know, in England, people will not be afraid to sit down; and the other you will put under the yew-tree near the gate. The tables must be immaculate; no spotted, rumpled cloths and chipped cups at Comfort Cottage, which is to be a strictly first-class tea station. You will put vases of flowers on the tables, and you ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... was left behind him. He paused not, till, breathless, and exhausted in spirit if not in frame, he reached the churchyard where Catherine's dust reposed. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay deep over the graves; the yew-trees, clad in their white shrouds, gleamed ghost-like through the dimness. Upon the rail that fenced the tomb yet hung a wreath that Fanny's hand had placed there. But the flowers were hid; it was a wreath of snow! ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Downs, stood the house occupied by Mr. Lee Hannaford. It was just too large to be called a cottage; not quite old enough to be picturesque; a pleasant enough dwelling, amid its green garden plot, sheltered on the north side by a dark hedge of yew, and shut from the quiet road by privet topped with lilac and laburnum. This day of early summer, fresh after rains, with a clear sky and the sun wide-gleaming over young leaf and bright blossom, with Nature's ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... deportment of poor Mary's husband, I happened one day to pass along the lane I have described as skirting the garden of the manor-house, on my way homewards to my farm; and on plunging my eyes, as usual, into the verdant depths of the clipped yew-walks, visible through the iron-palisades, was struck by the contrast afforded to the scene I had just witnessed, not only by its aristocratic tranquillity, but by the grave and subdued deportment of Lady Robert Stanley, who was sauntering in one of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... other onie cumen her onyenes, we willen and hoaten th{ae}t alle ure treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan. And for th{ae}t we willen th{ae}t this beo stedef{ae}st and lestinde, we senden yew this writ open, iseined with ure seel, to halden a-manges ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... the use of all manner of weapons, beginning with such as were of simple character; he was taught to ride, not only in the saddle, but to sit a horse bare-backed, or under any conceivable circumstances which might occur. He had to bend the stout yew bow and to wield the sword, he had to couch the lance, which art he acquired with dexterity by the practice at ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... the Moluccan fauna has been almost entirely derived from that of New Guinea, in which country the same deficiency and the same luxuriance is to be observed. Out of the seventy-eight genera in which the Moluccan land-birds may be classed, no less than seventy are characteristic of Yew Guinea, while only six belong specially to the Indo-Malay islands. But this close resemblance to New Guinea genera does not extend to the species, for no less than 140 out of the 195 land-birds are peculiar to the Moluccan islands, while ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Star"—were strapped imitation lances, and the windows were darkened by scrolls which all bore the same motto, "Loyal to Honor and to Beauty." This Lord Harrington had married a very beautiful wife, for whose pleasure he surrounded the house with a labyrinth of clipped yew hedges, the trees having been brought full grown from every part of England. Animated by a romantic jealousy, he never permitted this lady to stray beyond the park gates, and a little pavilion at ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... 'ware of two black monks, Each on a good palfrey. Then bespake Little JOHN, To MUCH he 'gan say: "I dare lay my life to wed These monks have brought our pay!" "Make glad cheer," said Little JOHN, "And frese our bows of yew! And look your hearts be sicker and sad, Your strings trusty and true!" The monk had fifty and two [men] And seven somers full strong, There rideth no Bishop in this land So royally I understand. "Brethren," said Little JOHN, "Here are no more but we three; But we bring them to dinner, Our ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... much the same as on the stormy night which Dickens chose for the opening of his story. Just across the road from the inn is the church which also figures in the tale, and a dark avenue of ancient yew trees leads from the gateway to the door. One can easily imagine the situation which Dickens describes when the old sexton crossed the street and rang the church bells on the night of the ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... but the want may be otherwise supplied; even greatness can be found on the small scale; for the mind and the eye measure differently. Bold rocks near hand are more inspiriting than distant Alps, and the thick fern upon a Surrey heath makes a fine forest for the imagination, and the dotted yew trees noble mountains. A Scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a knoll, or one of those rocky sea-side deserts of Provence overgrown with rosemary and thyme and smoking with aroma, are places where the mind is never weary. Forests, being more enclosed, are not at first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lovely Moon The Hounds Hector Listening Stones The Enemies The Silvery One The Flute Stars Ten O'clock and Four O'clock The Yew November Skies Delight Change Sleeping Sea The Weaver of Magic The Darksome Nightingale Under the Linden Branches Strife Foreboding Discovery More than Sweet The Brightness The Holy Mountains Rapture Music Comes The Idiot The Mouse Happiness Comfortable ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... wherefore? His foot is on the yew-tree bough; the turf Receives him: now the moonlight as he runs Embraces him—but he must go—is gone. Ah, once again he turns—thanks, thanks, my Love! He's gone. Oh, I'll believe him every word! I was so young, I loved him so, I had No mother, God ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... it. Vitruvius and Pliny use the words "cerostrata" or "celostrata," which means, strictly speaking, "inlaid with horn," and "xilostraton." The woods used by the Greeks were ebony, cypress, cedar, oak, "sinila," yew, willow, lotus (celtis australis), and citron (thuyia cypressoides), a tree which grew on the slopes of the Atlas mountains. The value of large slabs of this last was enormous. Pliny says that Cicero, who was not very wealthy according to Roman ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... a long, low, white house with a yew hedge leading from the garden gate to the front door. This hedge, of which Collins had told them, was famous in the neighbourhood; for it was enormously old, and as thick almost as masonry, and it was kept so carefully clipped that it was as smooth also as a wall. At the gate itself the yews ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... Queen Anne front of mellow red brick, and back premises of tile, oak, and modern rough-cast, with old brew-houses that almost enclosed a graveled court behind. Behind this again lay a great kitchen garden with box-lined paths dividing it all into a dozen rectangles, separated from the orchard and yew walk by a broad double hedge down the center of which ran a sheltered path. Round the south of the house and in the narrow strip westwards lay broad lawns surrounded by high trees completely shading it from all view ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... and that apple lay below the blades of his ample shoulders. In one hand he bore a broken leash of red bronze, and in the other two hunting spears with blades of flashing findruiney and the hafts were long, slender, and shining. By his thigh hung a short sword in a sheath of red yew and beside it the polished and nigh transparent horn of the Urus, suspended in a baldrick of knitted thread of bronze. The grass stood erect from the pressure of his light feet. His manly face had not yet known the razor; only the first soft down of budding ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... the town of Boroughbridge, in the county of York, to see our excellent 'ounds, and I would fain have him galvanised.—Do show us a run, and let it end with blood, so that he may have something to tell the natives when he gets back to his own parts. That's him, see, sitting under the yew-tree, in a bottle-green coat with basket buttons, just striking a light on the pommel of his saddle to indulge in a fumigation.—Keep your eye on him all day, and if you can lead him over an awkward place, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... 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
... me and mine Hold strangers of a Sassenach line; Our hamlet thresholds ne'er can shew The friendly forms of long ago; The rooks upon the old yew-tree Would e'en have stranger notes to me: Stand ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the churchyard on the west side, and below, on either side of a low bridge, stand two fine yew trees where boys in the old church days used to climb and devour the waxen berries with impunity. Meadows lie on each side the road, and on the left is a short lane, leading up to the old manor house, the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... 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
... and species of Primula, Hypericum, Swertia, Convallaria (Lily of the Valley), Vaccinium (Cranberry), Rhododendron, Gnaphalium, Polygonum, Digitalis (Foxglove), Lonicera (Honey-suckle), Plantago (Rib-grass), Artemisia (Wormwood), Lobelia, Oxalis (Wood-sorrel), Quercus (Oak), and Taxus (Yew). A few of the smaller plants (Plantago major and lanceolata, Sonchus oleraceus, and Artemisia vulgaris) are ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 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, And asked, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... themselves. The long stretches of grass on either side of the avenue were a fierce green, the brakes of bracken were burning orange, the long shadows of the trees that fell across the roadway were purple. The grove of yew trees, that hid the course of the river from him, had the sharpness of a silhouette cut ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... owned a yew tree, so very, very old that the count of its years was lost and had become a fable or a fairy tale. It was twisted, gnarled, and low; and its long branches, which would have reached the ground, were upheld, like the arms of some ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... and small iron cranes below the holes, and little windows below the cranes,—all perfectly useless, but also perfectly picturesque and perfectly Dutch. The rooms were large and airy, and the garden sloped down to the river-side. It had paths bordered by clipped box, and shaded by holly and yew trees cut in ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... were sent for rustication. Hence its name (the "south village of the monks"); and hence, too, the fish-ponds for Lenten fare, in the rectory gardens. Three of them enclose the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. The "Archdeacon's Walk" that grass- walk should be named, for my father paced it morning after morning. The pike and roach would plash among the reeds and water-lilies; and "Fish, fish, do your duty," my ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... 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 ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the spot where this young Christian lay, induced me to plant a yew-tree close by the head of her grave, adjoining the eastern wall of the church. I designed it as an evergreen monument of one who was dear to memory. The young plant appeared healthy for a while, ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... 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 ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... neighbours, and held it in his hand—he thought he should be more at ease holding something in his hand—as he walked on to the far end of the garden, where he remembered there was the largest row of currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree arbour. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... proving for the time ineffectual, the rector had a temporary reading-desk erected in the porch, and there held the service, the congregation sitting on chairs and forms in the yard, and some on the stone tombs, and even on the sward under the shade of the yew tree. ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... yeoman right good, And his bow was of trusty yew; And if Robin said stand on the king's lea-land, Pray, why should not we ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hills and the country's call; He slept all night in the Wan Tun Waste, He woke at dawn and about he faced, He flexed his ears and he flaired the breeze And scratched with his foot some poor wee fleas; He sat on his haunches, doubted, stood; To his left were the lairs of his native wood, The deep yew darkness of Cowall Itchen; He flaired, I say, with his nostrils twitching Till he smelt the sound of the Fleet Street stunt And over the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... 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 could see ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... away from Aunt Bella by going down the dark walk between the yew hedge and the window of Mrs. Fisher's room, and through the stable-yard into the plantation. The cocks and hens had their black timber house there in the clearing, and Ponto, the Newfoundland, ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... every disadvantage, weakened by a recent and terrible conflict, 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 in France and Spain, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 13. DA[']YEW[^U]"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 ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... own painful reflections, nothing better remained, after having seen after the comforts of the dumb companion of his journey, than to follow the herdsman's advice; and ascending towards the top of an eminence called Tom an Lonach, or the Knoll of Yew Trees, after a walk of half an hour he reached the summit, and could look down on the broad expanse of the lake, of which the height commanded a noble view. A few aged and scattered yew trees of great size still vindicated for the beautiful ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... all the trees in England, Oak, Elder, Elm and Thorn, The Yew alone burns lamps of peace For them that ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... heir riding off to the Continent in ignorance. So I thought, 'Oh, what shall I do?' Just then Mr. Neville visited me, and I told him: on that he offered me his piebald horse to carry the news after Mr. Gaunt, because my gray was too tired: it was the day we drew Yew-tree Brow, and crossed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... is in this case allowable, for see that brazen front of maiden sixty, guiltless of curls, with a huge structure of bonnet cocked straight at the top of her head, like the roof of a market-house, and her broad, square skirts of faded green, deformed by formal knots of yew and holly. Look with what a blushless face of triumph she eyes her poor tottering neighbour opposite, who never appears destined "to suffer a recovery." Oh, 'tis remorseless! But look down that vista of charity children in slate coloured Quaker bonnets, stuck one against ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... and sombre cedars. From the edge of the lawn the steep slope of the Down rose, planted with all manner of shrubs, the walks through which were inches deep in dead leaves, needles, and fir-cones. Long neglect had permitted these to accumulate, and the yew hedges had almost grown together and covered the ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... foggy morn; the day was brief, Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf. The dew dwelt ever on the herb; the woods Roared with strong blasts; with mighty showers, the floods All green was vanished, save of pine and yew That still displayed their melancholy hue; Save the green holly, with its berries red And the green moss ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... 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 every man to use his own, as he, and not as they thought fit." I ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... his will, sat and sang another song; and in the meanwhile the party had broken up, and wandered away by twos and threes, among trim gardens and pleasaunces, and clipped yew-walks— ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... probably been brought up. Apsley Manor; she said it half aloud, and the picture was thrust into her mind. She could see red gables, old tiled roofs, latticed windows, overlooking sloping lawns, herbaceous borders with the shadows of yew trees lying lazily across them. She could smell the scent of stocks. The colours of sweet-peas and climbing roses filled her eyes. In that moment, she had fallen into the morass of romance, and through it all, like a gift of God, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... lagoons; morasses submerged every spring-tide; vast beds of reed and sedge and fern; vast copses of willow, alder, and grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat, which was swallowing up slowly, all-devouring, yet all-preserving, the forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had once grown on that low, rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists assure us) beneath the sea from age to age. Trees, torn down by flood and storm, floated and lodged in rafts, damming the waters back upon the land. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... first courtyard is a low thatched cottage used as a porter's lodge. Haddon is maintained, not as a residence, but to give as perfect an idea as possible of a baronial hall of the Middle Ages. To get to the entrance the visitor toils up a rather steep hill, and on the way passes two remarkable yew trees, cut to represent the crests of the two families whose union by a romantic marriage is one of the traditions of this famous place. One yew represents the peacock of Manners, the present ducal house ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... “street” of small cottages and two or three larger dwelling-houses. There is here an old manor, called “Hall-garth,” with an interesting old house with gables, thatched roof, some panelled rooms, a large fish pond, an old-time garden with yew hedges fantastically trimmed, and a fine old tree or two. In a field called “the Park,” at the east end of the parish, are some fine trees, remnants of a former avenue. The ancient well, said to be Roman, in the rectory grounds, has already been mentioned. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... on the table, looking up into Mr. 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
... so much as her little graves. There the tiny bodies, like unexhausted censers, pour out all the stored sweetness they had no time to use above the ground, turning the earth they lie in to precious spices. There the roots of the old yew trees feel about tenderly for the little unguided hands, and sometimes at nightfall the rain bends over them weeping ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... Amid these stale things Who care not for gaying, And those junketings That used so to joy her, And never to cloy her As us they cloy! . . . But She is shut, she is shut From the cheer of them, dead To all done and said In a yew-arched bed. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies |
