"Oozy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the floods! And you that o'er the troubled ocean go Strike not your standards to this venomed foe, Better the greedy wave should swallow all, Better to meet the death-conducting ball, Better to sleep on ocean's oozy bed, At once destroyed and numbered with the dead, Than thus to perish in the face of day Where twice ten thousand deaths one death delay. When to the ocean sinks the western sun, And the scorched tories fire their evening gun, "Down, rebels, down!" the angry ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... people. Having hauled round Cape Grafton, we found the land trend away N.W. by W., and three miles to the westward of the Cape we found a bay, in which we anchored about two miles from the shore, in four fathom water with an oozy bottom. The east point of the bay bore S. 74 E., the west point S. 83 W., and a low, green, woody island, which lies in the offing, N. 35 E. This island, which lies N. by E. 1/2 E. distant three or four leagues from Cape Grafton, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... daisies spread Where with surface dull like lead Arabian pools of slime invite Manticors down from neighbouring height To dip heads, to cool fiery blood In oozy depths of sucking mud. Sing then of ringstraked manticor, Man-visaged tiger who of yore Held whole Arabian waste in fee With raging pride from sea to sea, That every lesser tribe would fly Those armed feet, that hooded eye; Till preying on himself at last Manticor dwindled, sank, ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... bewilders you in San Francisco and New York. Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and Madrid a great village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble each other no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the home-stretch is like the rising and falling of an oozy ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... in our day. As the early spring sun, warming the long-frozen soil and heating the foul moistures of the earth, brings to life and to the surface of the ground swarming myriads of noxious insects and reptiles, who, during the long winter months, have slept silent and torpid far down within the oozy depths, and hatches the thrice-told myriads of eggs deposited in seasons passed away, and which have long waited for his life-giving influence to pour forth their swarming millions to the upper air; even so this war has hatched the eggs of error, and brought forth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... music as, 'tis said, Before was never made, But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator great His constellations set, And the well-balanced world on hinges hung, And cast the dark foundations deep, And bid the weltering waves their oozy ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... and a quarter, till we came to the southern side of them; then we had five and six fathoms, and anchored. So we sent in our boat to sound, and they found no less water than four, five, six, and seven fathoms, and returned in an hour and a half. So we weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms, oozy ground, and saw many salmons, and mullets, and rays very great." The next morning having ascertained by sending in the boat that there was a very good harbor before him, he ran in and anchored at two cables' length from the shore. This was within ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... out for the rest, who were straggling about: upon which they all soon came to the boat: but it was past all their strength to launch her, the boat being very heavy, and the shore on that side being a soft oozy sand, almost like a quicksand. In this condition, like true seamen, who are, perhaps, the least of all mankind given to forethought, they gave it over, and away they strolled about the country again; and I heard one of them say aloud to another, calling ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... which I now lay was of soft, oozy silt; about me were rocks, slippery and covered with a coating of grey-green slime. Spots in the slime moved. I could hear it, or rather feel it—a sort of bubbling quake, mere beginnings of the life impulse. The tops and sides of the rocks were festooned with waving green fringes of growths, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... carriest The keen savour of the foam,— Thou dost bear unto the west Fragrance from thy woody home, Where perchance a house is thine Odorous of the oozy pine. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... his back, where they had been strapped, two pairs of shoes in shape similar to those which our trappers in America adopted from the Indians for marching over snow, but slighter and shorter. These we donned, the negro showing me how to fasten mine, and then we stepped on to the morass, the oozy red soil squelching beneath our feet. The hounds came with us for a few yards, but, the ground becoming softer the farther we went from the edge, they halted, whined as though loath to part from friends, and then ran back to meet Vetch and one of his buccaneers, who ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the Maumee. Darkness overtook them while still on the lake, and the head boats hung out lights for the guidance of those astern; but about midnight a gale came up, and the whole flotilla was nearly swamped, being beached with great difficulty on an oozy flat close to the mouth of the Maumee. The waters of the Maumee were low, and the boats were poled slowly up against the current, reaching the portage point, where there was a large Indian village, on the 24th of the month. Here ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... o'clock; the mist all clearing off; and Friedrich, before that second charge, had a growing view of the Plain and its condition. Beyond question, there is Browne; not in retreat, by any means; but in full array; numerous, and his position very strong. Ranked, unattackable mostly, behind that oozy Brook, or BACH of Morell; which has only two narrow Bridges, cannon plenty on both: one Bridge from the south parts to Sulowitz (OUR road to Sulowitz and it would be by Radostitz and the Homolka); and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... is now no fitting home for living men. San Michele is the island close before Murano, where the Lombardi built one of their most romantically graceful churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at present undergoing restoration. Its state of squalor and abandonment to cynical disorder makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be the custom of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... extending from one continent to the other. This plain is about four hundred miles wide and sixteen hundred long, and there are no currents to disturb the mass of broken shells and unknown fishes that lie on its oozy surface. It was named the "Telegraphic Plateau," with a view to its future use. At either edge of this plateau huge mountains, from four to seven thousand feet high, rise out of the depths. There are precipices of sheer ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... hold was passed, the oozy road That separates the marsh, the grove sublime (5) Where reigns the Scythian goddess, and the path By which men bear the fasces to the feast On Alba's summit. From the height afar — Gazing in awe upon the walls of Rome His native city, since the Northern war Unseen, unvisited — thus Caesar ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... a fever! Why thus? so soon! Only six years for love! While any formal, heartless matrimony, Patched up by Court intrigues, and threats of cloisters, Drags on for six times six, and peasant slaves Grow old on the same straw, and hand in hand Slip from life's oozy bank, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... or the Heavenly Host shadowed in masses of crimson or green—and, down below, a slippery purple sea, frothed sanguine at the edges, and wild, half-naked creatures treading out the juice, dancing in the oozy stuff rhythmically, to the music of some wailing air of their own. Saturnia regna indeed, and in the haunt of Sant' Ambrogio, or under the hungry eye of San Bernardino, or other lean ascetic of the Middle Age. But that, after all, is Italian, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... beneath the bank, Listening to Cam's rippling murmurs thro' the weeds and willows dank, As I chewed the Cud of fancy, from the water there appeared An old man, fierce-eyed, and filthy, with a long and tangled beard; To the oozy shore he paddled, clinging to my Funny's nose, Till, in all his mud majestic, Cam's gigantic form arose. Brawny, broad of shoulders was he, hairy were his face and head, And amid loud lamentations tears incessantly he shed. ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... could without man's help to make this great valley most delightful to the eye. But the wolves still prowled and howled; the briers grew rough and rank; the grass, coarse and thin; the heathered hills were oozy and cold in their watery beds; the clumpy, shrubby trees wore the same ragged coats of moss; and no feature of the scene mended for the better from ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... visitant of the spirit land, why dost thou hover ever round the shades of time, and ever ply thy bark on yonder sluggish stream, whose oozy waters bear thee on its bosom? Why dost thou ever bear away a victim that returns not with thee? As we look for thy returning bark "through the vista, long and dark it comes with thee alone." Thou mysterious messenger, where dost bear those ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear, Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it dear; And hard she pressed it to her breast—then Windy ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the boat,—to rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek,—to take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down its interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths, studded with minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark muscles, while overhead streams and thunders that other river whose every wave is a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the ocean,—lying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... if blown in off the icy lake, and oozy April fell from the clouds. How weary we grow of winter in a cold land, and how loath is winter to permit the coming of spring! May stole in from the south. There came a warm rain, and the next morning strips of green were stretched along ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... prepared; and indeed, to his family and connexions, except for the loss of the stipend, it was a very gentle dispensation, for he had been long a heavy handful, having been for years but, as it were, a breathing lump of mortality, groosy, and oozy, and doozy, his faculties being shut up and locked in by ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... day—clothing ourselves with elemental sparks, and shooting with fiery speed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hemisphere, far down among the uncouth monsters that wallow in the nether seas, along the wreck-paved floor, thorough the oozy dungeons of the rayless deep; the last intelligence of the crops, whose dancing tassels will in a few months be coquetting with the west wind on those boundless prairies, flashing along the slimy decks of old sunken ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... it, in chewing up our food,— As any one perchance begins to squeeze With hand and dry a sponge with water soaked. Next, all which forth we squeeze is spread about Along the pores and intertwined paths Of the loose-textured tongue. And so, when smooth The bodies of the oozy flavour, then Delightfully they touch, delightfully They treat all spots, around the wet and trickling Enclosures of the tongue. And contrariwise, They sting and pain the sense with their assault, According as with roughness they're supplied. Next, only up to palate is the pleasure Coming from ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... change his bed of fiery rich array, For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay; Our anchor must soon change the lay of merry craftsmen here, For the "Yeo-heave-o'!" and the "Heave-away!" and the sighing seaman's cheer; When, weighing slow, at eve they go—far, far from love and home; And sobbing sweethearts, in a ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... prosperous reign, A series of successful years, In orderly array, a martial, manly train. Behold even the remoter shores, A conquering navy proudly spread; The British cannon formidably roars, While starting from his oozy bed, The asserted Ocean rears his reverend head; To view and recognise his ancient lord again: And with a willing hand, restores The fasces ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... difference between high and low water at the flood is not more than six feet, and the average flow is said not to amount to more than two feet six inches—but even this flux is sufficient to produce large tracts of sea which the reflux converts into square miles of oozy sand. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... leagues within the mouth of this entrance we had sounding in 90 fathoms, fair, grey, oozy sand, and the farther we run into the westwards the deeper was the water, so that hard aboard the shore among these isles we could not have ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... unknown! What tho' a brainless rout Usurp the sacred title of the Bard— What tho' the chilly wide-mouth'd chorus From Styx or Lethe's oozy Channel croak: So was it, Peter, in the times before us When Momus throwing on his Attic cloak Romp'd with the Graces and each tickled Muse The plighted coterie of Phoebus he bespoke And laughing with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the night there was a cry. Ray had found the water falling from an oozy bank, and there we dozed fitfully until we were startled by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... candle manufactories. The chief customer of the latter is the Church. The armoury and mint are contiguously situated to St Peter's. The tanning of hides is extensively carried on along the banks of the Tiber, whose classic "gold" is not unfrequently streaked with oozy streams of a dirty white. Flour-mills are numerous. Amid the brawls which disturb the Trastevere, the ear can catch the ring of the shuttle, for there a few hand-loom weavers pursue their calling. There is a tobacco ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... to the main Runs the sweet tide without a stain, Unsullied as it seems; The nymphs of many a sable flood Deform with streaks of oozy mud The ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... wind, and, in a manner, to tack, as ships do when the wind does not serve. Water-fowls, such as ducks, have at their feet large skins that stretch, somewhat like rackets, to keep them from sinking on the oozy and ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... meadows were in a state of inundation, and on alluvial soils the ravages of the floods Were visible in layers of mud and gravel that were deposited over many of the prostrate corn fields. The peat turf lay in oozy and neglected heaps, for there had not been sun enough to dry it sufficiently for use, so that the poor had want of fuel, and cold to feel, as well as want of food itself. Indeed, the appearance of the country, in consequence of this ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and burned so keenly, he could no longer continue the overarm. Then he took the buoy in both hands, held it straight out, thrust it edge down into the oozy substance, used it as a kind of anchor and drew it to him. At first this technique seemed to advance him somewhat, but presently he appeared merely to disturb the viscous mass without going forward. He grew acutely discouraged; his back, shoulders, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Thames in streams majestic flows, Or Naiads in their oozy beds repose While Phoebus reigns above the starry train While bright Aurora purples o'er the main, So long, great Sir, the muse thy praise shall sing, So long thy praise shal' make Parnassus ring: Then grant, Maecenas, thy paternal ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... so heavy. It was narrow, and at points curiously black in tone. There was none of the freshness, the rushing, tumultuous flow of a mountain torrent about it here. Its banks were marshy with a wide spread of oozy soil, and miry reeds grew in abundance. The trail cut well away from the bed of the creek, mounting the higher land where the soil, in curious contrast, was sandy, and the surface deep in a silvery dust. To an observer the curiosity of the contrast ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the God of the Sea, Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove, But cogitation in his watery shades, Arose, with locks not oozy, and began, 170 In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands. "O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung, Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies! Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears, My voice is not a bellows unto ire. Yet listen, ye who ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... rush the breathless hosts, Swarm round the hills, and darken all the coasts; Boats follow boats along the shouting tides, 450 And spears and javelins pierce his blubbery sides; Now the bold Sailor, raised on pointed toe, Whirls the wing'd harpoon on the slimy foe; Quick sinks the monster in his oozy bed, The blood-stain'd surges circling o'er his head, 455 Steers to the frozen pole his wonted track, And bears the iron ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... trouble. Perhaps this might prove to be a valuable lesson to the boy. He could not help but see how smartly the others kept themselves from slipping off the narrow ridge of ground by planting their staves against some convenient stump, or the butt of a tree, anywhere but in the oozy mud. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... faintest gleams of colour, like a dove's wing, blue plains and heights, over the nearer woodland; everywhere fallen rotting leaf and oozy water-channel; everything, tint and form, restrained, austere, delicate; nature asleep and breathing gently in the cool airs; a ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he was at the edge of the moat. He stooped, and waving his torch along the ground he moved to the far angle of the chateau, examining the soft, oozy clay. It was impossible that a man could have clambered out over that without leaving some impression. He reached the corner and found the clay intact; at least, nowhere could he discover a mark of hands or a footprint set as would be that of a man ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... sin tells upon character, and makes the repetition of itself more and more easy. 'None is barren among them.' And all sin is linked together in a slimy tangle, like a field of seaweed, so that the man once caught in its oozy fingers is almost sure ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... bunt fastened up, the end thrown over, and the trawl-beam took all down to scrape once more over the sands and scoop-out the soles and other flat-fish that are so fond of scuffling themselves down in the soft oozy sand, flapping their side-fins about till they are half covered, and very often letting the trawl-rope pass right ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Plunging with a grey fat friar, Hither, thither, to and fro, Breathing mists and whisking lamps, Plashing in the shiny swamps; While my cousin Lantern Jack, With cook ears and cunning eyes, Turns him round upon his back, Daubs him oozy green and black, Sits upon his rolling size, Where he lies, where he lies, Groaning full of sack - Staring with his great round eyes! What a joy O ho! Sits upon him in the swamps Breathing mists and whisking lamps! What a joy O ho! Such a lad is Lantern Jack, When he rides the black nightmare Through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the shore of the old salt sea— Yellow sands with frost-like tinge; The bones of the dead on the edge of its bed, Lay lapped in its oozy fringe. ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... great pencil dots Heaven with stars, doth scarce begin From its impulses within— Nature's stern necessity, To be schooled in cruelty,— Monster, waging ruthless war:— And with instincts better far Must I have less liberty? Fish are born, the spawn that breeds Where the oozy sea-weeds float, Scarce perceives itself a boat, Scaled and plated for its needs, When from wave to wave it speeds, Measuring all the mighty sea, Testing its profundity To its depths so dark and chill:— And with so much freer will, Must I have less liberty? ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... rivers—the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheld—had deposited their slime for ages among the dunes and sand banks heaved up by the ocean around their mouths. A delta was thus formed, habitable at last for man. It was by nature a wide morass, in which oozy islands and savage forests were interspersed among lagoons and shallows; a district lying partly below the level of the ocean at its higher tides, subject to constant overflow from the rivers, and to frequent and terrible inundations by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... some versions of the legend, Hy—the Dew. The nursery, where Zeus places it to be brought up, is a cave in Mount Nysa, sought by a misdirected ingenuity in many lands, but really, like the place of the carrying away of Persephone, a place of fantasy, the oozy place of springs in the hollow of the hillside, nowhere and everywhere, where the vine was "invented." The nymphs of the trees overshadow it from above; the nymphs of the springs sustain it from below—the Hyades, those ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... surround the Place Vendome and march up the Rue de Castiglione or of such nondescripts as the Tavernes Royale and Anglaise—but Parisian. For instance, my good man, caneton a la bigarade, or duckling garnished with the oozy, saliva-provoking sauce of the peel of bitter oranges. There is a dish for you, a philter wherewith to woo the appetite! For example, my good fellow, sole Mornay (no, no, not the "sole Mornay" you know!), ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... was short and still rich under foot, although it froze hard every night; but all along the brook's marge there were many small oozy bubbling springlets, which it required a stinging night to congeal; and round these the ground was poached up by the cattle, and laid bare in spots of deep, soft, black loam; and the innumerable chalkings ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... mankind.— Nor was his energy confin'd alone To friends around his philosophick throne; Its influence wide improv'd our letter'd isle. And lucid vigour marked the general style: As Nile's proud waves, swoln from their oozy bed. First o'er the neighbouring meads majestick spread; Till gathering force, they more and more expand. And with new ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... make you ours when you were three years old. Maggie said then it wasn't any use, but I've always held on. You see, I was the first man there, honey, and there are things you see, that you can't ever make anybody else understand. She loved him Elnora, she just made an idol of him. There was that oozy green hole, with the thick scum broke, and two or three big bubbles slowly rising that were the breath of his body. There she was in spasms of agony, and beside her the great heavy log she'd tried to throw him. I can't ever forgive her for turning ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... taking the lightest of the guns, they tried first to get it across. Many of the men waded neck deep into the water and strove at the wheels. But the stream went completely over the cannon, which also sank deeper and deeper in the oozy bottom. It then became an effort to save the gun. The Panther put all his strength at the wheel, and, a dozen others helping, they at last got it back to the bank from which ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... placed myself in the sight of one of the lizards, and offered my body to its attack. The challenge was accepted. It swooped like a dropping stone, and I swerved and drove in the lance at its oozy eye. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... basket, now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy, iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, and dour, irascible ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... these aboriginal savages were of the Celtic race, and that Gaelic was spoken in Scotland at a time when its strips of grassy links, and the sites of many of its seaport towns, such as Leith, Greenock, Musselburgh, and Cromarty, existed as oozy sea-beaches, covered twice every day by the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... at least two miles from the camp when they heard noises that indicated the passage of a small body of the Indians, and as they stepped behind trees to conceal themselves Shif'less Sol's foot suddenly sank with a bubbling sound into an oozy spot. In an instant, all the Indians stopped. Henry and his comrade heard rustling sounds for a moment, and then there was complete silence. The two knew that the warriors had taken to cover, and that probably they would not escape without a ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... voices from the after deck, where under the awning lay the languid deck passengers, sleeping on their bedding rolls. Very quiet it was ashore, so still and quiet that one could hear the bubbling, sucking noises of the large land-crabs, pattering over the black, oozy mud, or the sound of a lean pig scratching himself against the piles of a native hut, the clustered huts, mounted on stilts, of the village at ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there,—so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,—that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the woody height Trooped zebras, velvet-brown. The date's green crest Beneath, the peaceful camels lay at rest. And slender-straight camelopards the boughs Down-drew, the lush-green leaves thereon to browse. Or oft 'mong oozy bogs, or through the fens, Fearless she went, when low, 'mong reedy dens The water-courses by, huge creatures slept, Or in the jungles spotted panthers crept, And in the thickets deadly serpents wound Like blossomed wreaths, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... ground stretching towards Quebec between the Montmorency and the little river St Charles. Here the bulk of his army was strongly entrenched, mostly on rising ground, just beyond the shore of the great basin of the St Lawrence, the wide oozy tidal flats of which the British would have to cross if they tried to attack him in front. His right was Quebec itself and the heights of ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... Amphimachus with gold bedight, But him his trappings from a woful death 1070 Saved not, when whirled beneath the bloody tide To Peleus' stormy son his spoils he left. Sarpedon with the noble Glaucus led Their warriors forth from farthest Lycia, where Xanthus deep-dimpled rolls his oozy tide. 1075 ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... with first one eye and then the other, he ducked his head and began biting savagely at the leathern wrapping on his leg. But the uselessness of this soon appearing to him, he gave it up, and sought to ease his despair by diving and guttering with his bill among the roots of the oozy bottom. In this absorbing occupation he so far forgot his miseries that all at once he tried to lift himself on the water, flap his wings, and sound his trumpet-call. One wing did give a frantic flap. The other surged fiercely against its bandages, sending a ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the Atlantic were vast plains of soft mud, in some places 2500 fathoms (15,000 feet) deep; that is, as deep as the Alps are high. And more: they found out, to their surprise, that the oozy mud of the Atlantic floor was made up almost entirely of just the same atomies as make up our chalk, especially globigerinas; that, in fact, a vast bed of chalk was now forming at the bottom of the Atlantic, with living shells and sea-animals of the most brilliant colours crawling ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... mind off the runes, and the harassed philologer set himself resolutely to the task. For her slight advances he found bolder responses, and still scanning the irrigating ditches closely for an especially oozy bottom, he expatiated on the loveliness of the afterglow and confirmed the recollection of last evening that Frauelein Linda's dimpled hand might be an eminently pleasant thing to hold. Thus gradually she was won from ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not onward to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the vicinity of the Tower guns, which would regale his hearing on days of salutation; nor did he forget the sweet sound of mooring and unmooring ships in the river, and the pleasing objects on the other side of the Thames, displayed in the oozy docks and cabbage-gardens of Rotherhithe. Sir Launcelot was not insensible to the beauties of this landscape, but, his pursuit lying another way, he contented himself with a less enchanting situation, and Crowe accompanied him out of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... in the heaven. The dull clouds, monotonous in colour and form, hid all beauty in the firmament, and shed heavy darkness on the earth. Dense, stagnant vapours clung to the mountain summits; from the drooping trees dead leaves and rotten branches sunk, at intervals, on the oozy soil, or whirled over the gloomy precipice; and a small steady rain fell, slow and unintermitting, upon the deserts around. Standing upon the path which armies had once trodden, and which armies were still destined to tread, and looking towards the solitary lake, you heard, at first, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... out from bed. He came staggering under his double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament; some wretched calico that he had mopped his poor oozy front with had rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of indigo, and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man were competent to. It was like ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied than those of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and climate, moisture, and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of 4000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur in great abundance and variety in the wooded regions, while open parks, flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt valleys lying at different elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess the required conditions for the development ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... sent a shudder through the frame of Somers, as he again thought of Owen Raynes, cold and dead in his oozy grave ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... the solidity of the ground. In addition to these sinuosities there were several pockets or alcoves along the tunnel, as if the stream had here found passage for a short way, and was then obliged to recede. The walls were oozy, and little rivulets trickled through, and went rippling over the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... champions die. With drying wounds that scarcely bled Back to her brother's home she fled. Oppressed with pain, with loud lament At Khara's feet the monster bent. There like a plant whence slowly come The trickling drops of oozy gum, With her grim features pale with pain She poured her tears in ceaseless rain, There routed Surpanakha lay, And told her brother all, The issue of the bloody ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... mortar-bed just beyond the foundation trench. "Wait a second." She skipped across the small chasm which intervened between the foundation-wall and solid ground. She scooped up some water from a hallow puddle with a battered tin can, and began the formation of an oozy little pocket in the middle of the mortar-bed. "Now if I only had a shingle," she said, after she had reduced the mortar to the consistency ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... rich and oozy under my feet; but I was desperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep, and so came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my pursuers passed away to my left. In one place three strange, pink, hopping animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... I at last came out upon the banks of the Bristol Channel, at a place called Shurton Bars, where the muddy Parret makes its way into the sea. At this point the channel is so broad that the Welsh mountains can scarcely be distinguished. The shore is flat and black and oozy, flecked over with white patches of sea-birds, but further to the east there rises a line of hills, very wild and rugged, rising in places into steep precipices. These cliffs run out into the sea, and numerous little harbours and bays are formed in their broken surface, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... familiar, he was complacent and—amazedly she discovered it—he was big. Her vocabulary could not furnish her with the qualifying word, or, rather, epithet for his bigness. Horrible was suggested and retained, but her instinct clamored that there was a fat, oozy word somewhere which would have brought comfort to her brains and her hands and feet. He did not keep his arms quiet, but tapped his remarks into her blouse and her shoulder. Each time his hands touched her they remained a trifle longer. They seemed to be great red spiders, they would ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... I knew I was sneakin' out, And the oozy corpses was all about, And I felt so scared I wanted to shout, And me skin fair prickled wiv fear; And I sez: 'You coward! You 'ad no right To take on the job of a man this night,' Yet still I kept creepin' till ('orrid sight!) The trench of the ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... feet, the ape-man groped about the reeking, oozy den. He found that he was imprisoned in a subterranean chamber amply large enough to have accommodated a dozen or more of the huge animals such as the one ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... kept up with great spirit, till Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'- wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon discovered by the retainers, and dragged from its oozy bed, grinning worse than ever. Tidings of the godsend were of course carried instantly to the castle; for the Baron was a very great man; and if a dun cow had flown across his property unannounced by the ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... blackthorn bush was a mass of pure white stars. At the far end, instead of a hedge, lay the moat, a shallow stagnant pool, bordered with drooping willows, tall reeds, and rushes that reared their spear-like stems from the dark oozy water. Originally this moat had encircled the mansion as a means of defence, but now, like the ruined gateway, its mission was long past, and it survived, a sleepy witness to the warfare of our forefathers, and a picturesque adjunct to the general ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... mixed with bilberries, and crowberries, and cranberries—no, I am all wrong: there was nothing out yet but a few furze-blossoms; the rest were all waiting behind their doors till they were called; and no full, slow-gliding river with meadow-sweet along its oozy banks, only a little brook here and there, that dashed past without a moment to say, "How do you do?"—there (would you believe it?) while the same cloud that was dropping down golden rain all about the queen's new baby was ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... yawn the cavern wide Presents an orifice on either side. A dismal orifice, from sea to sea Extended, pervious to the God of Day: Uncouthly join'd, the rocks stupendous form An arch, the ruin of a future storm: High on the cliff their nests the woodquests make, And sea-calves stable in the oozy lake. But when bleak Winter with his sullen train Awakes the winds to vex the watery plain; When o'er the craggy steep without control, Big with the blast, the raging billows roll; Not towns beleaguer'd, not the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... existence; and that during that time the Editor stated many facts, from his own observation, connected with the refusal of sites, and other matters of a similar character. He saw congregations worshipping on bare hill-sides in the Highlands of Sutherland, and on an oozy sea-beach on the coast of Lochiel; he sailed in the Free Church yacht the Betsey, and worshipped among the islanders of Eigg and of Skye. Nor did he shrink from very minutely describing what he had witnessed on these occasions, nor yet from ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... all else the teeming earth produc'd Spontaneous. Heated by the solar rays, The stagnant water quicken'd;—marshy fens Swell'd up their oozy loads to meet the beams: And nourish'd by earth's vivifying soil, The fruitful elements of life increas'd, As in a mother's womb; and in a while Assum'd a certain shape. So when the floods Of seven-mouth'd Nile desert the moisten'd fields, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... luxuriance, where the road was just a mule-path, the branches often meeting before our faces, so that we had to raise our hands to part them. It rained as it always does here. While we young people were venturing on a short canter, my saddle turned completely, and I landed on my feet in an oozy place, fortunately unhurt. A few miles short of the half-way house,—miles are not measured by feelings there,—my horse gave out. For some time he had walked lame in all his feet, and at last refused to go at all. One of the young gentlemen lent me his horse, and led mine. We reached the half-way ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... interminable, partly covered with water, with black knobs rising here and there above the surface, affording a precarious foothold for the animals in crossing it. Where the water was not, there lay in place of it a bed of black oozy mud, which looked as if it might give way under the foot, and let it, at each step, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... whispering rushes, mingling each its sweetness with the good, rank smell of mud below. Here were the treasures of the water-course, close hidden, or blowing in the light of day. The pale, golden-hearted arrow-head neighbored the homespun pickerel-weed, and—oh, mysterious glory from an oozy bed!—luscious, sun-golden cow-lilies rose sturdily triumphant, dripping with color, glowing in sheen. The button-bush hung out her balls, and white alder painted the air with faint perfume; willow-herb ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... depressed portions the 'forest' has degenerated into a marsh through which a sluggish stream wends it way to the distant river. Slimy reptiles bask in the warm sun and glide lazily over the black, oozy soil. At intervals the stillness is broken by the splash of a gigantic bullfrog returning to his favorite pool. This acrobatic feat is usually accompanied by a deep-throated cry of satisfaction, not unlike ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... fall reaches 146 feet. At La Salle the Illinois River is met, and this stream, after a course of 225 miles, enters the Missouri. In the whole distance the Illinois River has a fall of 29 ft. "It has a sluggish current; an oozy bed and bars, formed chiefly by tributaries, with natural depths of 2 ft. to 4 ft.; banks half way to high waters, and low bottoms, one to six miles wide, bounded by terraces, overflowed during high water from 4 ft. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... Protestants takes place, an union between us is impossible; and this fact it is which would attach disgrace to you, and a want of honor, principle, and gratitude to me. We should necessarily lead the lives of the guilty, and seek the wildest fastnesses of the mountain solitudes and the oozy caverns of the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... manner to seize The amber fruit that is used to grease The itching palm in Shekel's Disease,— On a long long v'yage, as busy as bees, Never stopping for a moment to take our ease, Never changing our course, except when the breeze Took to blowing to windward,—we had slipped by degrees Down the oozy slopes of the Hebrides, And passed through the locks of the Florida Keys, Which in getting through was a rather tight squeeze, But danger is nothing to men like these, When suddenly the lookout, a Portuguese Who had better been ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... say it was a little short of two miles deep, so it has got a long way to sink before it reaches its oozy bed." ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, Where, other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love There entertain him all the Saints above, In solemn troops and sweet societies That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... gone out of fashion in these tenements, gazing hungrily at the announcement that "A silver present will be given to every purchaser by a real Santa Claus.—M. Levitsky." Across the way, in a hole in the wall, two cobblers are pegging away under an oozy lamp that makes a yellow splurge on the inky blackness about them, revealing to the passer-by their bearded faces, but nothing of the environment save a single sprig of holly suspended from the lamp. From ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... more prejudicial to health. They are obliged to stand in water often times mid-leg high, exposed to the scorching heat of the sun, and breathing an atmosphere poisoned by the unwholesome effluvia of an oozy bottom ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... mouldering garrets of Clare, looking over waste land to the oozy Cam, no doubt wished that their foundress had been less Spartan. Very little of the domestic architecture that Camden admired in Cambridge is now left; and yet probably it and Oxford are the two places of all which he describes ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... scale pieces of gold were tossed By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: "She is no respecter of persons." Then a youth wearing a red cap Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. And lo, the lashes had been eaten away From the oozy eye-lids; The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; The madness of a dying soul Was written on her face— But the multitude saw why she wore ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... out as though asleep. And it seemed to me, though I could not tell why, that all this flotsam, and my own hulk along with it, slowly was drifting closer and closer together; and was packing tighter and tighter in the soft oozy tangle of the weed, which everywhere was matted so thickly that the water did not ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... tramp come after him, wading through the tall, wet marsh grass, stumbling as he came. He was within five feet of Zip and was just thinking, "One more step and I can reach him!" when the long tangle grass caught one foot and threw him face down in the soft, oozy mud. ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... one-eyed mariner were on deck; they had only to turn up the small ship's boy, who quickly made his appearance on being summoned, and they set to work to turn round the windlass, which soon won the anchor from its oozy bed. The sails were set, and as a light breeze had just then sprung up, the galiot began to move slowly down the canal towards the open ocean, which was yet, however, a good way off. As the breeze freshened the galiot moved faster and faster, and soon the town, with its church ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... bells and sunflowers indeed! What should you say to bells of real silver, glowing and shining? To fair maids blossoming and curtseying in the flower-beds, fair maids so beautiful that the Knight would fain have stopped with them all day? To roses flowering everywhere? To lillies trickling oozy scent into gold bowls laid ready to receive it? To whole bowers of honeysuckle, and whole beds of lavender? To hedges of every flowering shrub imaginable? To lofty trees whose leaves whispered soft invitations to the passers-by to come and sleep ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... of them Lawrenceville boys, ain't you?" she said, eyeing with curiosity the oozy ruffle of ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... As I have said previously, before the stream entered the Stockade, it was rendered too filthy for any use by the contaminations from the camps of the guards, situated about a half-mile above. Immediately on entering the Stockade the contamination became terrible. The oozy seep at the bottom of the hillsides drained directly into it all the mass of filth from a population of thirty-three thousand. Imagine the condition of an open sewer, passing through the heart of a city of that many people, and receiving all the offensive ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... sate them well; And dived into the river's darksome deep, To search for beauteous nymph in secret cell. Nor this the first nor yet the second leap Which from the bridge had made that infidel! Who, often floundering in its oozy bed, Well in the soundings of that ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... any shoal sufficiently shallow to necessitate this. Several times Francis could feel, by the dragging pace, that she was touching the oozy bottom; but each time she passed over without coming to a ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... through tunneled mountains and over storm-swept seas to bear us and our wealth to all regions of the globe; we talk to one another from city to city, and from continent to continent along ocean's oozy depths the lightning flashes our words, spreading beneath our eyes each morning the whole world's gossip,—but in the midst of this miraculous transformation, we ourselves remain small, hard, and narrow, without great thoughts or great loves or immortal hopes. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... worse—the road, as Thornton had said, was little more indeed than a logging trail through the heart of the woods; and now, deeper in, with increasing frequency, the tires slipped and skidded on damp, moist earth that at times approached very nearly to being oozy mud. ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... be a cumbersome flat-boat of the type used by clam-fishers. In fact the smell that simply swirled up from its oozy bottom left no doubt that the boat had been used for that purpose. A pair of unbelievably heavy oars, cut from a sapling with a hand-axe, trailed in the water from "loose oarlocks." Dave gave a gasp of dismay as he ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... forth from these trials unscathed. I was always tearing my dresses in clambering over fences, or bumping my head in creeping under. Where others cleared brooks with a light spring, I landed in the middle. I was sure to pick out spongy, oozy, slippery grass to stand upon, in marshy land, or was yet more likely to slump through over shoes in black mud. Banks always caved in beneath my feet, unexpectedly. Brambles seemed to enter into a conspiracy to lay violent hands on me, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... increase with theirs her flames. Of all our navy none shall now survive, But that the ships themselves were taught to dive, And the kind river in its creek them hides. Freighting their pierced keels with oozy tides." ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... horses' feet were heard on the wet, oozy ground without. The irate widow did not rise, but merely indicated her knowledge of Holcroft's arrival by rocking ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... yards away from my head, which I ducked below the trench parapet. Splodge! went the officer in front of me, with a yell of dismay. The water was well above his top-boots. Splosh! went another man ahead, recovering from a side-slip in the oozy mud and clinging desperately to some bunches of yarrow growing up the side of the trench. Squelch! went a young gentleman whose puttees and breeches had lost their glory and were but swabs ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... gone out snipe shooting alone. Whether he had followed me or whether we had chosen the same vicinity by chance, I do not know; but at any rate as I came out from the underbrush on the edge of a low, swampy place, I almost stepped on the man. He was stretched face downward on the black, oozy soil with his arm buried in a hole at the foot of ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... elasticity of the bundle of fibers prevents its being bitten through. The raft serves likewise as a buoy for the captured animal. According to the statements of the hunters, the large crocodiles live far from human habitations, generally selecting the close vegetation in an oozy swamp, in which their bellies, dragging heavily along, leave trails behind them which betray them to the initiated. After a week the priest mentioned that his party had sent in three crocodiles, the largest of which, however, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... coral beaches—waving cocoa palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to dizzy, snowcapped, cloud-hung heights, now stretches away into vast reaches of oozy mangrove bog and dank cinchona grove—here flecked with stagnant lagoons that teem with slimy, crawling life—there flattened into interminable, forest-covered plains and untrodden, primeval wildernesses, impenetrable, defiant, alluring—and all perennially bathed in dazzling light, vivid color, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking |
