"Fir tree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... situated on an eminence. On the top of the hill the Saracens had a castle, from which they were driven (p.187), and all the fortifications destroyed excepting one tower, now the town clock tower. By the roadside, about half-way between Cogolin and St. Tropez, is a very large fir tree. 32 m. N.E. from Hyres and 26m. S.E. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... struggle no more, The hatchet is fallen, the red man is low; And near him reposes the arm of his foe. . . . . . . . . Sleep, soldiers of merit; sleep, gallants of yore. The hatchet is fallen, the struggle is o'er. While the fir tree is green and the wind rolls a wave, The tear drop shall brighten the turf of the brave. —From an ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... never heard of a stork that when it met with a fir tree demurred as to its right to build its nest there; and I never heard of a coney yet that questioned whether it had a permit to run into the rock. Why, these creatures would soon perish if they were always doubting and fearing as to whether they had ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... a pretty little Fir Tree. It had a good place; it could have sunlight, air there was in plenty, and all around grew many larger comrades—pines as well as firs. But the little Fir Tree wished ardently to become greater. It ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Hill, who died in the 89th year of his age. Lord Hill, his nephew, was chief mourner. There was a large attendance of ministers of all denominations, and a great concourse of people. Rev. Wm. Jay, of Bath, preached an admirable sermon from Zech. ii. 2. "Howl fir tree, for the cedar hath fallen." The venerable remains were ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... northern Europe, are made of wood from the fir tree; at their thickest part, in the centre, they are between four and five inches in width. Here, where the foot rests, there is a piece of birch bark fastened, over which there is a loop, and through this loop the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... never to leave it again, and Hilda argued that the world could not be worth seeing, if the woods were so vastly preferable as he seemed to think. She felt herself to be what she was in his imagination, a part of the nature in which she had grown up, as much as the oldest and tallest fir tree on the hillside. People who spend all their lives in unfrequented regions, feel a sense of property in the air, the earth and the water, which city-bred folks cannot readily understand. They have such an intimate, unconscious knowledge of the seasons, the weather, the growth of plants and the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... long sigh of sorrow, "Take them all, O Hiawatha!" From the earth he tore the fibers, Tore the tough roots of the Larch Tree. Closely sewed the bark together, Bound it closely to the framework. "Give me of your balm, O Fir Tree! Of your balsam and your resin, So to close the seams together That the water may not enter, That the river may not wet me!" And the Fir Tree, tall and somber, Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, Rattled like a shore with pebbles, Answered wailing, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... and started after the young brave, who was bounding along toward the scrub fir tree where Aggretta was perched. On came the bear, with the blood streaming from his mouth, steadily gaining on the brave, until it seemed certain he would catch him before the tree was reached. Aggretta, watching the race, gave a cry of warning, and the brave turned suddenly and ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... this was a scarf of yellow satin wrought with green silk, the borders whereof were likewise green. And the green of the caparison of the horse, and of his rider, was as green as the leaves of the fir tree, and the yellow was as yellow as the blossom of the broom. So fierce was the aspect of the knight, that fear seized upon them, and they began to flee. And the knight pursued them. And when the horse breathed forth, the men became distant ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... "know German" (Letter to Murray, June 7, 1820), and he may, as Mr. Tozer suggests, have supposed that the word "tannen" denoted not "fir trees" generally, but a particular kind of fir tree. He refers, no doubt, to the Ebeltanne (Abies pectinata), which is not a native of this country, but grows at a great height on the Swiss Alps and throughout the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... hadn't everything on their side—I ought to explain though that in our district were large forests of a kind of pine—there's one in this garden,' and he pointed to a pyramidal fir tree with spreading branches of small pointed leaves spiked at the ends, and with a cone of nuts about the size of a big man's head, hanging from one ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a large rock, about twelve feet square, slightly elevated above the ground, and entirely overgrown with moss. A small fir tree, not ten inches high, grew in its centre, and the symmetry of its diminutive trunk, rendered more beautiful by the regularity with which its little branches sprung forth and drooped around first attracted our notice to the spot as ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... our guns, intimating that not more than one would be allowed to approach. They retired and fetched their arms, when one, the ill-fated husband of Mary March, our captive, advanced with a branch of fir tree (spruce) in his hand. When about ten yards off he stopped and made a long oration. He spoke at least ten minutes; towards the last his gesture became very animated, and his eye "shot fire." He concluded very mildly, and advancing, shook hands with many of the party—then he attempted ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... was the biggest and the handsomest man in the village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare. Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and break his paddle—which he often ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... very little girl some one, probably my mother, read to me Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Little Fir Tree. It happened that I did not read it for myself or hear it again during my childhood. One Christmas Day, when I was grown up, I found myself at a loss for the "one more" story called for by some little children with whom I was spending ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... time. We know that the Puritans strove vainly against the veneration of the Maypole as the spirit of the new vegetation, [335] and against the old nature-rites observed at Christmas, the veneration of fire as the preserver of life against cold, and the veneration of the evergreen plants, the fir tree, the holly, and the mistletoe, which retained their foliage through the long night of the northern winter, and were thus a pledge to man of the return of warmth and the renewal of vegetation in the spring. And it therefore seems not altogether improbable that the Puritans may have similarly ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... mocking smile on his lips and raised his sword. The crowd drew back. He was full ten inches taller than Kenric of Bute, and the muscles of his broad bare chest were as the roots of a tree that rise above the ground; as the nether boughs of the fir tree were his strong and hairy arms. Little cause did he see to shrink from combat with the youth who thus ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... relates some curious particulars of this ship: "A fir tree of prodigious size was used in the vessel which, by the command of Caligula, brought the obelisk from Egypt, which stands in the Vatican Circus, and four blocks of the same sort of stone to support it. Nothing certainly ever appeared ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... mountain-side that evening, very tired, but with the curious, peaceful stillness of heart that comes with an entire acceptance of fate, when she heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the hollow of the canyon. Her heart began to beat to suffocation. She ran to where, standing near a big fir tree, she could look straight down on the trail leading up to Prosper's cabin. Presently the horsemen came in sight—the one that rode first was tall and broad and fair, she could see under his hat-brim his straight ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... reed I tuned on the hill, My grief for the rough slopes of Sunnach so still, The wind in the fir tree and bleat of the ewe Are lost in the wild cry my heart makes for you. The brown floors I danced on, the sheds where I lay, Are gone from my mind like a wing in the bay: Dear lady, I'd herd the wild swans in the skies If they knew of lake water ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... was a welcome word. We slackened our pace, knowing that the dogs would hold him till we arrived, and we needed our breath for the next act. So on a trot we came over a rise of ground and saw, away up on the limb of a tall straight fir tree, a bear that looked very formidable and large. The golden rays of the rising sun were shining ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... it is a true Willow-Wren's nest—a rather large globular structure with the entrance at one side. Regarding the first nest taken, I have noted that it was placed on a sloping bank on the ground, among some low ferns and other plants, and close to the root of a small broken fir tree which, being somewhat inclined over the nest, protected it from being trodden upon. It was composed of coarse dry grass and moss and lined with finer grass and a few black hairs. The cavity was about 2 inches, and the entrance about 11/2 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears'—and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... with her cruel mouth, and Martha was afraid. The old woman whispered to the old man: "I have a word for you, old fellow. You will take Martha to her betrothed, and I'll tell you the way. You go straight along, and then take the road to the right into the forest ... you know ... straight to the big fir tree that stands on a hillock, and there you will give Martha to her betrothed and leave her. He will be waiting for her, ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... the horse with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner's hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision was white and ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a cup-shaped structure, composed exteriorly of twigs, grass, and moss, and lined with stalks of maiden-hair fern and fine roots. It is usually placed high up in a fir tree. Colonel Rattray believes that the birds bring up two broods in the year. They lay first in May, and, as soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, a second nest is made. Thus in July both young birds at large and nests with eggs are likely to ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... history with a tale that breathes the very atmosphere of the Quaker persecution of New England, let us open The Twice-Told Tales and read the story of The Gentle Boy, a Quaker child of six, found sobbing on his father's newly-made grave beside the scaffold under the fir tree. Let us enter the solemn meeting house, hear the clergyman inveigh against the Quakers, and sit petrified when, at the end of the sermon, that boy's mother, like a Daniel entering the lion's den, ascends the pulpit, and invokes ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the green uplands of St. Augustin, its white cottages rising in soft undulations as far as the sight can reach. Over the extreme point of the southwestern cape hangs a fairy pavilion, like an eagle's eyrie amongst alpine crags, just a degree more secure than that pensile old fir tree which you notice at your feet stretching over the chasm; beneath you the majestic flood, Canada's pride, with a hundred merchantmen sleeping on its placid waters, and the orb of day dancing blithely over every ripple. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... brothers down the water and a mason from Falstone Si had run a dry-stone dyke—strengthened with fir tree trunks—round about for the protection of his sheep and nowt in the event of a foray, and was as pleased with 'the Bower' as Lord William Howard with Naworth. 'Twas a quaint name enough, for 'the Bower' stood on the true march line of the naked Border, and in the very haunt and playground ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... at the painting. It was a study of a solitary fir tree, growing at the edge of a cliff—wind-swept, rugged. The high precipice on which it stood was only suggested and far below there was ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... in the forest, where the warm sun and the fresh air made a sweet resting place, grew a pretty little fir tree. The situation was all that could be desired; and yet it was not happy, it wished so much to be like its tall companions, the pines and firs ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... in thin cakes (strongly resembling the havver-bread of Scotland) and baked only twice a-year. The oatmeal for this bread is, in times of scarcity, which in Norway frequently occur, mixed with the bark of elm or fir tree, ground, after boiling and drying, into a sort of flour; sometimes in the vicinity of fisheries, the roes of cod kneaded with the meal of oats or barley, are made into a kind of hasty-pudding, and soup, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... there is quiet below. A woodpecker on a fir tree raps lightly and flies farther on and vanishes; it has hidden, but does not cease to tap with its beak, like a child when it has hidden and wishes to be sought for. Nearer sits a squirrel, holding a nut in its paws and gnawing it; its tail hangs over its eyes like the plume over ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... did you see that?" said Jack. "A hawk pounced upon a small bird and has taken him to that fir tree, where he is eating him." It is a kestril; one of the commonest of the British hawks, and which we may often see in this district; though I am afraid those destructive animals called gamekeepers will in time succeed in destroying every hawk in the neighbourhood. ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: And it shall be to the Lord for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... so long, but on the Saturday Philip came home as usual, and, as there was now no secret about the canoe, went down to look at it with Oliver. They pushed it off, and floated two or three miles down the stream, hauling it on the shore past the fallen fir tree, and then, with a cord, towed it back again. The canoe, with the exception of the trifling deficiency alluded to, was a good one, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... clouds parted and the moon shone out, feeble, no doubt—for she is but in her first quarter—and her beams fell right through an opening in the wood, and revealed the figure of a little child seated at the foot of a fir tree. Alone in the Forest at that time of night! My heart seemed to stand still, and I said to myself, 'Elsie is right after all. That can only be some spirit child, some ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... be even harder to guess is that of the word spruce. We now use this word to describe a kind of leather, a kind of ginger beer, and a variety of the fir tree, and also in the same sense as "spick and span." The word used to be pruce, and ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... ragged hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, and save under the heaviest of the trees the ground was green with short, coarse grass. Danton took a hatchet from the canoe, and trimmed a fir tree, heaping armfuls of green boughs at the foot of an oak near the top of the slope. Over these he threw a blanket. The maid came slowly up the hill, in response to his call, and with a weary little smile of thanks she sank upon the fragrant couch. She rested against the tree trunk, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... "Now," says the giant, "there is a fir tree beside that loch down there, and there is a magpie's nest in its top. The eggs thou wilt find in the nest. I must have them for my first meal. Not one must be burst or broken, and there are five ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... cavern, well stored with bowls of milk and cream, and with rows of cheeses standing on the ledges of rock. While the Greeks were regaling themselves, a noise was heard, and great flocks of sheep and goats came bleating in. Behind them came a giant, with a fir tree for a staff, and only one eye in the middle of his forehead. He was Polyphemus, one of the Cyclops, sons of Neptune, and workmen of Vulcan. He asked fiercely who the strangers were, and Ulysses told him that they were shipwrecked sailors, imploring him ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though in answer to his prayer, life for him suddenly became a doubtful thing. A wild gust of wind had uprooted a young fir tree from the plantation, and bearing it with a savage glee toward the cliff side, dashed it against the kneeling man. There was no chance for him against it. Over they went, man and tree together, to all appearance bound ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... up when she saw him, and her heart beat with fear, for she did not know him. But when he had told her who he was, in her great joy she forgot all her sufferings, and they seemed as nothing to her. He was a very handsome man, as straight as a fir tree. They sat down together and she told him all her adventures, and he wept with pity at the tale. And then he told her his ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... described as follows: Beginning at a large fir tree blazed on N. side being S.E. Cor. thence due N. 20 chains set post and made a mound thence due west 40 chains set post and made mound thence S. 20 chains set post being S.W. Cor. thence due E. 40 chains to point of beginning, in ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley |
