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Besom   Listen
verb
Besom  v. t.  (past & past part. besomed)  To sweep, as with a besom. (Archaic or Poetic) "Rolls back all Greece, and besoms wide the plain."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Besom" Quotes from Famous Books



... brilliant and sparkling. He spoke like a great statesman and patriot and a sound constitutional lawyer. All the cobwebs of sophistryship and metaphysics about State Rights and State Sovereignty he brushed away with a mighty besom." ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sun set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers—a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... on the subject of knightly honor, but I had good reason for being so, because the Augean stable of moral and intellectual enormity in this world can be cleaned out only with the besom of philosophy. There are two things which more than all else serve to make the social arrangements of modern life compare unfavorably with those of antiquity, by giving our age a gloomy, dark and sinister aspect, from which antiquity, fresh, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... said, "thoo'rt as daft as a besom. Thoo hes made a botch on't, thoo blatherskite. Stick that in thy gizzern, and don't thoo go bumman aboot like a bee ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... and four score and five thousand dead men lay there, they were to be glad. Solemn and awful as is the baring of His righteous sword, it is an occasion for praise. It is right to be glad when men and systems that hinder and fight against God are swept away as with the besom of destruction. 'When the wicked perish there is shouting,' and the fitting epitaph for the oppressors to whom the surges of the Red Sea are shroud and gravestone is, 'Sing ye to the Lord, for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... sunshine, its verdure, its forests, its flowers, its perfume; but oh! above all, for the loving, refined, intelligent, gentle race of people it was my great, my priceless privilege, to be born amongst—a people worthy to live with, yes, worthy to die for! The stern besom of war has wept over you, beloved Natchez—your fairest homes have been desolated, your lovely gardens are now only remembrances—your family circles are broken up—your bravest sons are sleeping in the dust of death, or weeping tears of bitterness in exile—your ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... that he belonged to these horrible people, or I should not have admitted him. He came with his broom to brush out the litter of the birds. His eyes fell upon the Venus, and in an instant he had rushed upon her and struck her two blows with his wooden besom. Then we fell upon him and dragged him away. But alas! alas! it was too late, for already the wretch had dashed off the fingers ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... suffering us to make a stand of our desires concerning religion, either in Scotland or here, albeit we have often set down mensura voti to ourselves; but he has as often moved us step after step to trace back our defections, and make the last innovations a besom to sweep out the former, and the king refused to be a mean to engage in a covenant with himself and others, and so has drawn us, against our wills, and beyond our desires, to perform our duty, and to give a testimony to his truth, that much of God and divine wisdom and design, and ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... the wind again changed, and the whole mass of vapour, smoke, and ashes came sweeping like the very besom of destruction towards the giddy ledge on which the observers stood. Nigel was so entranced that it is probable he might have been caught in the horrible tempest and lost had not his cooler companion grasped his arm and dragged him violently into the passage—where they were safe, though half ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... to the depths of but once or twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale had whirled it to some ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... closed the door. I soon calmed down, therefore, into a state of tranquillity; from that into a drowsiness, and finally into a deep sleep; out of which I did not awake, until the housemaid, with her besom and her matin song, came to put the room in order. She stared at finding me stretched upon the sofa; but I presume circumstances of the kind were not uncommon after hunting dinners, in her master's bachelor establishment; for she went on with her song and her work, and took ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... along the foreshore, out of reach Of furious driven waves, three hundred pines Straggle the marches between sand and soil. Like maps of stone-walled fields their branching roots Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there, Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring. That woman's gaze toils worn from remote years, Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon, Beyond the farthest isle, whose filmy shape Floats faint on the sea-line. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... sun, now sole occupant of the heavens, declined slowly in the direction of the dark marshes across the river; only above the roofs of Zhitnaia Street could there be seen fluttering about in alarm a flock of snow-white pigeons, while waving below them was the black besom which had, as it were, swept them into the air, and from afar one could hear the sound of an angry murmur, the mournful, mysterious murmur ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... of wind-swept ulmus' bear, And siffling mists beyond a bell That hide veiled shadows of a peak Above the stationed domes of red, Augueries of a marching pair,— Twin demons of unconquered Hell! Spell visions that the soffins leak That felt the besom of the dead, Just as the Twilight's scarlet urn Is seen from heights unfathomed, strong. There runnels of green waters cold, Toss lepers from their murky breast; There venom-oils and tapers burn To light the ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... that curse him, though in woe our sad heart bleeds, The curse that's on him is the curse that follows wicked deeds. He suspected and he punished, he judged, and then he drew The besom of destruction our quiet homesteads through; So it's rippling in the waters, it is rustling through the air, Five hundred thousand curses upon ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... would commend my soul to God, making sure that the breath He gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind; a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons' tongues; a pouring flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the dulled ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... and over again, fought the two armies, literally sweeping the face of the country with the besom of destruction. The oldest of her soldiers of legal age were fifty-five years of age when the war closed. The youngest were twelve years of age when the war opened. Older men and younger boys were in the war, ay, and were killed on the field of battle. As ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... is much oftener a poor countryman, who has wandered to London in search of employment, and, finding nothing else, has spent his last fourpence in the purchase of a besom, with which he hopes to earn a crust. Here his want of experience in town is very much against him. You may know him instantly from the old habitue of the streets: he plants himself in the very thick and throng of the most crowded thoroughfare—the rapids, so to speak, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... some parts of England a singular custom prevails. When a married woman leaves home for a few days, the husband hangs a broom or besom from the window. When, how, and where did this originate, and what does ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various

... to reform or to govern, certainly it should not be the Devil's regiments of the line that I would first of all concentrate my attention on! With them I should be apt so make rather brief work; to them one would apply the besom, try to sweep them, with some rapidity into the dust-bin, and well out of one's road, I should rather say. Fill your thrashing-floor with docks, ragweeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them,—that is not the method ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... conducted with spirit, his bride flung an apron over her gown and helped him. I remember one elderly bridegroom, who, having married a blind woman, had to do double work at his penny wedding. It was a sight to see him flitting about the torch-lit barn, with a kettle of hot water in one hand and a besom to sweep ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... leaves of parchment, and two or three jars of blue and white earthenware. On nails there hung a brush of half dried broom, a broad-brimmed rush hat, and a blackened rosary. On the other side of the table, and by the window, there was a small holy- water basin with a little besom. On the walls were hung pieces of coarse linen roughly embroidered with small crosses flory, worked in dark red silk. The vault was blank and white, and rushes were strewn on the stone pavement. In ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... to vanish. Permit yourself to be swept quietly into the dunghill. All that there was about you of value has departed from you; and allow me to say that you are now—rubbish." And then the ruthless besom comes with irresistible rush, and the rubbish is swept into the pit, there to be hidden for ever from the sight. And the pity of it is this—that a man, if he will only restrain his greed, may eat his cake and yet have it; aye, and in so doing will have twice ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... washed my foster-sister's feet I took a besom and began to sweep the floor of the house. One of the Hags was very pleased to see me doing that. She said I would make a good servant, and after a while she asked me to sit at the fire. I sat in the corner of the chimney. ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum

... daughter, sweep it every morning with the besom of prayer, and every night bear over it the torch of self-examination. So shall the evil insects not make their ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt

... bed sae warm, And leave your coaxing wife, man; Gae get your besom, tramps and stane, And join the friendly strife, man. For on the water's face are met, Wi' mony a merry joke, man; The tenant and his jolly laird, The pastor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... there. You kid, fetch this or bring that. You kid, go to the drift for water, or take the besom and sweep the stoep, or scrub out the room there—do you hear, you kid?" These orders came thick and fast when at last she was old enough to work; and she was old enough when she was very young, and did work like a little beast of burden. A ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... week of March was marked by a furious snow-storm that swept the big prairie like a besom, but plugged up every coulee and ravine. For four days no communication had been held with the Ogallalla Agency. The wires were down, the road impassable, and Mrs. Davies had reached her new harbor ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... the gallant men of the Union Army were on them. They were swept over the South Mountains with the besom of destruction. On Monday, astonished to meet McClellan, when they had expected to meet those whom they less feared, they called their hosts over the Potomac and prepared for battle. McClellan had previously arranged his strategic ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... told that between my seventh and my eighth year I had been sent, not only to church, but to school; but my grandmother deeming me too tender for the besom discipline of a schoolmaster,—from which even the Quality were not at that time spared,—I was put under the government of a discreet matron, who taught not only reading and writing, but also brocaded waistcoats for gentlemen, and was great caudle-maker at christenings. It ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... subject is investigated. Evidence is there produced to prove that these Ignatian letters, even as edited by the very learned and laborious Doctor Cureton, are utterly spurious, and that they should be swept away from among the genuine remains of early Church literature with the besom of scorn. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... at him without sight in his eyes, and his face grew very pale. "Excellency, all in one night, the besom of destruction was abroad," he heard Nahoum say, as though from great depths below him. He slowly turned his head to look at Lacey. "Is this true?" he asked at last in an unsteady voice. Lacey could not speak, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of their rooms as a protection against harm in general and conflagration in particular. A hint as to the way in which mistletoe comes to be possessed of this property is furnished by the epithet "thunder-bosom," which people of the Aargau canton in Switzerland apply to the plant. For a thunder-besom is a shaggy, bushy excrescence on branches of trees, which is popularly believed to be produced by a flash of lightning; hence in Bohemia a thunder-besom burnt in the fire protects the house against being ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Palais, you trod the natural soil of Paris, augmented by importations brought in upon the boots of foot passengers; here, at all seasons, you stumbled among hills and hollows of dried mud swept daily by the shopman's besom, and only after some practice could you walk at your ease. The treacherous mud-heaps, the window-panes incrusted with deposits of dust and rain, the mean-looking hovels covered with ragged placards, the grimy unfinished walls, the general air of a compromise between a gypsy camp, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... was not to be hurried. He had his regular routine in fire-mending, from which no power could move him. "Ay, Sir," he muttered, brushing away with his feather besom. "I'll clear oot when I clear up. When a thing's no' dune richt it's ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... monarchy—not merely a convenient instrument, but quite indispensable for the very reason that it was just as impossible to construct the state wholly without religious elements as to discover any new state-religion fitted to take the place of the old. So the besom of revolution swept doubtless at times very roughly through the cobwebs of the augural bird-lore;(1) nevertheless the rotten machine creaking at every joint survived the earthquake which swallowed up the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... he did, reasoning backward from the assumed fulfilment! But perhaps there may be detected in Mr. Masson's "swept its arcs" a little of that prophetic hedging-in vagueness to which he allows so generous a latitude. How if the "two-handed engine," after all, were a broom (or besom, to ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... as they call thee,—hold a bit; I know better than that. Catch Johnny Darbyshire at flinging his money into a lawyer's bag! No, no. I know them chaps wi' wigs well enough. They've tongues as long as a besom's teal, and fingers as long to poke after 'em. Nay, nay, I don't get my money so easily as to let them scrape it up by armfuls. I've worked early and late, in heat and cold, for my bit o' money, and ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... some precipices beyond which could be glimpsed the eternal snows. Sometimes an avalanche slid over a slope with the distant appearance of a great white waterfall and the echo of muffled thunder. Where the mountain was swept as by a mighty besom, the pack-train kept an anxious eye on the snow {31} amid the valleys of the upper peaks; for, in an instant, the snowslide might come over the edge of the upper valley to sweep down the slope, carrying ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... of Naseby, that would sweep, With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than half The victory is attained, when one or two, Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn, Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn, Crucified Truth, when thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... nothing. Some of the frightened people of the village were returning as we passed through, and were sadly lamenting the destruction of almost everything that could be destroyed on and about their homes by this besom of destruction,—war. Food, stock, fences, bed and bedding, etc., all gone or destroyed. Some of the houses had been perforated by the shells,—probably our own shells, aimed at the enemy. One man told me a shell had entered ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... dearie?" he said. "I don't stand in need of hedge-stealings. I'm a freeholder, with money in the bank; and now I won't trust women no more! Silly old besom! I do beleft she'd ha' stole the Squire's big fob-watch, if ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... cushat, callynge lowe, Goe waken Time from sleepe: Goe whysper in his ear, that soe His besom sweepe Me to that heape Where all ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the benediction of your sweetness a little further in the world. Believe me, I am not so foolish as to despise charity or true efforts to increase the comfort of the poor; but I know that poverty and pain and wretchedness can never be driven from the world by any besom of the law, and I do see that humanitarianism, sprung as it is from materialism and sentimentalism (what a demonic crew of isms!) has bartered away the one valid consolation of mankind for an impossible hope that begets only discontent and mutual hatred ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... sleeping in the kitchen; he considered that a house could only be well guarded at night from the ground floor. There was his bed, in the corner against the brush and besom cupboard, all made up. Its creaselessness, so characteristic of Aguilar, had not been disturbed. The sight of the narrow bed made Audrey think what a strange existence was the existence of Aguilar. ... Then, with a boldness that was half bluster, she went upstairs, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... one of the girls,—a large coarse Fleming, who sat by the new lord's side. "Fine words," said she, scornfully enough, "for the sweepings of Norman and Flemish kennels. You forget that you left one of this very Leofric's sons behind in Flanders, who would besom all out if he was here ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Here's the besom of Reformation, Which should have made clean the floor; But it swept the wealth out of the nation, And left us dirt good store. Will you buy the state's spinning-wheel, Which spun for the roper's trade? But better it had stood still, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... obeyed the spur, and he rode on and into the city, the gates of which were deserted. There he beheld on all sides that the Lord had indeed put the besom of destruction into the hands of the Reformers; and that not one of all the buildings which had been polluted by the papistry—no, not one—had escaped the erasing fierceness of its ruinous sweep. The presence of the magistrates lent the grace of authority to ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... foreseeing when he put the affair down on paper. Tories hate and scandalise him; despots put him in prison; he only can bequeath his scheme to be wrought out by the happy man of a happier age. Here, however, comes me in a besom which sweeps all the old peccant institutions away at one whisk. Church and state are severed, and for ever. The Holy Alliance against the liberties of mankind is broken up—the pomp and corruption of courts ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... a matter of such importance, was freely attributed to the most sinister motives. "These Orders in Council were designedly concealed from Mr. Rose, although they had long been deliberated upon, and almost matured, before he left London. They were the besom which was intended to sweep, and would have swept, our commerce from the ocean. Great Britain in the most insidious manner had issued orders for the entire ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... a lady, But the commonest wench on the street, Shuffling, shabby and shady, Shameless to pass or meet. Walk with her once—it's a weakness! Talk to her twice—it's a crime! Thrust her away when she gives you 'good day,' And the besom won't board you next time. Largesse! Largesse, Fortune! What is Your Ladyship's mood? If I've no care for Fortune, My Fortune is bound to ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... I have gude cause to remember her,' said Peter, 'for she turned a dyvour on my hands, the auld besom! and after a' that the law could do to make me satisfied and paid, in the way of poinding and distrenzieing and sae forth, as the law will, she ran awa to the charity workhouse, a matter of twenty punds Scots in my debt—it's a great shame ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... must have a servant. This seemed only less horrible. My father turned up his sleeves and clutched the besom. I tossed aside my papers, and was ready to run the errands. He answered the door, I kept the fires going, he gave me a lesson in cooking, I showed him how to make beds, one of us wore an apron. It was not for long. I was led to my desk, the newspaper was put into my father's ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie

... kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation." "I will also make it a possession for the bittern and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts." Isa. 13:19, 20; 14:23. See also the prophecy of the overthrow of Nineveh, Nahum, chs. 2, 3, and of Tyre: "I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea." "I ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... Romany patteran Sheer to the Austral Light, Where the besom of God is the wild south wind, Sweeping ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... "Besom." And he was not at all ashamed, for a Scot never uses this word without a ring of fondness and admiration in his voice, as of one who gives the world to understand that he quite disapproves of this audacious woman, wife or daughter of his, but is proud ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... thoughts in the time of this duty, I have laboured to compose my mind and fix it upon God, then, with great force, hath the tempter laboured to distract me, and confound me, and to turn away my mind, by presenting to my heart and fancy the form of a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like, as if I should pray to those; to these he would, also, at some times especially, so hold my mind that I was as if I could think of nothing else, or pray to nothing else but to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... office-bearer, but is distinctly determined in the making of the tabernacle; there is not a tackle, nor the quantity of it, not a curtain, nor the colour thereof, not a snuffer, nor a candlestick, nor a besom that sweeps away the filth, nor an ash-pan that keepeth the ashes, but all are particularly set down; yet, ye will not get a bishop, nor an archbishop, nor this metropolitan, nor that great and cathedral man, no not within ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches, on the western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform has swept him out of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... hot months of summer the mortality continued. The valley was swept as with the besom of destruction, and the drama of a people's death was enacted with a thousand variations of horror. When spring came, the invaders entered the valley once more. They found it deserted, with the exception of a few wretched ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... a besom over the treeless spaces, whisking new sand over the litter of the scant-leaved shrubs, and the little doorways of the burrowers are as trim as city fronts. It takes man to leave unsightly scars on the face of the earth. Here on the mesa the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... before, sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the English wife (weaver) and daughter (duhitar, milkmaid). Without confining the sphere of woman's activity ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... grow faint and sick with self-disgust; but the end will be a clean house, and the light and wind of Heaven shining and blowing clear and fresh and sweet through all its chambers. Better so, than have a hurricane from God burst in doors and windows, and sweep from his temple with the besom of destruction every thing that loveth and maketh a lie. Brothers, sisters, let us be clean. The light and the air around us are God's vast purifying furnace; out into it let us cast all hypocrisy. Let us be open-hearted, and speak every man the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... of my besom. I am the old woman that sweeps the cobwebs from the sky; only I'm busy ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... secret egotism, fell away from her. The customs of society, with what was valuable in them and what was inadequate, assumed their true proportions. It was as if her House of Life had been swept of fallacy by the besom of the mountain wind. A feeling of strength, courage, and clarity took possession of her. There was an expectation, too,—nay, the conviction,—that an event was at hand fraught for her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been swept back into line by a resistless besom of ballots. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the winds, and if I have come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... jolly humour and comic scorn, a besom wielded by a laughing giant, is calculated to put the victims in better humour with their executioner than with themselves. Browning has had to endure more than most men at the hands of the critics, and he takes in this volume, not in this poem only, a ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier successor wears his dignity and pockets ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... "Wheest, ye besom, wi' your deleries; there's trouble enough aboot the night without you skirling like a craking hen. It's no' your kind I'm feared for, ye useless one, but these wild hill lassies, for when the devil is loose among the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... as that constant-quiet, preventive care, or frequent topical applications, carefully applied, would gradually renovate the whole interior. But who wishes to be cleaning all the time? Who wishes to be always dusting? Indeed, at the best, we are constantly with broom, brush, or besom in hand; but the men will not perceive it, and we receive no credit for our tidiness. What is to be done, then? Evidently there is nothing better than a "demonstration," as the politicians say—a demonstration that may be felt; a mass-meeting of brooms, buckets, brushes, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... more his tongue seemed tied; for in this wretched life there is no wine of enjoyment without dregs of vexation. And just at this moment Filadoro's mother suddenly appeared, who was such an ugly ogress that Nature seemed to have formed her as a model of horrors. Her hair was like a besom of holly; her forehead like a rough stone; her eyes were comets that predicted all sorts of evils; her mouth had tusks like a boar's—in short, from head to foot she was ugly beyond imagination. Now she seized Nardo Aniello by the nape of his neck, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... solemn might to shake The peoples of the earth, Through the long shadow and the fires that make New altar and new hearth! And with the besom of red war He sweeps The sin and woe away, To purge with fountains from His ancient deeps The dust of old decay. O not in anger but in Love He speaks From tempest round Him drawn, Unveiling thus the fair white mountain peaks ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... poached egg, and betrayed the insular goldsmith. A train three yards long completed this gorgeous figure. She had commenced life a shrimp-girl, and pushed a dredge before her, instead of pulling a silken besom after her. Another stately queen (with an "a") heated the atmosphere with a burnous of that color the French call flamme d'enfer, and cooled it with a green bonnet. A third appeared to have been struck with the beauty of a painter's ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... the house of the Assistant Spikeman, and there were no persons in the room save himself and Prudence. The door was closed, and the girl was standing with a besom in one hand, while the Assistant, who was seated, had hold of the other, and was looking up into her hazel eyes. He drew her down with a force which was not resisted, and imprinted a kiss on the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... way is long; What mad pursuit! What tumult wild! Scratches the besom and sticks the prong; Crush'd is the mother, and ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... are, but with another sort of madness, quite a new kind. The livelong day he looks open-mouthed towards heaven and never stops addressing Zeus. "Ah! Zeus," he cries, "what are thy intentions? Lay aside thy besom; do not sweep ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the feeling: ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... ecstatically at the Languedocian capital. It is a metropolis of beggardom, a mendicant's Mecca, a citadel of Jules Richepin's cherished Gueux. Here, indeed, Elia need not have lamented over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian reformation—your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its abuses—is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity. Scrips, wallets, bags, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... at their feet,) had they then said to us, "We are far richer, far stronger, than you; we can easily burn your houses, take your provisions, carry off your cattle, and sweep your country with the besom of destruction; but we abhor the idea. Your houses, your women, your children, are all sacred in our eyes; and even of your goods we will touch nothing without giving you a reasonable price." Had they but said this, Carolina ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... exactly know, my dear. It's what my mother used to say when we asked anything that puzzled her. It was said that the Old Owl was Nanny Besom (a witch, my dear!), who took the shape of a bird, but couldn't change her voice, and that's why the owl sits silent all day for fear she should betray herself by speaking, and has no singing voice like other birds. Many people used to go and consult the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... seemed to have a genius for order, discipline, economy, and dispatch. He found the palaces grand "circumlocution offices,"—with, in all the departments, an entangling network of red-tape, which needed to be swept away like cobwebs. He himself entered the Royal Nursery finally with the besom of reform. It is said in his "Memoirs"—"The organization and superintendence of the children's department occupied a considerable portion of Stockmar's time"; and he wrote, "The Nursery gives me more trouble than the government of a King would do." Very likely the English ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... the devil where you'd be, if we hadn't met That hiring-day at Hexham, on the minute. I'd spent last hiring with another wench, A giggling red-haired besom; and we were trysted To meet at the Shambles: and I was awaiting her, When I caught the glisk of your eye: but she was late; And you were a sonsy lassie, fresh and pink; Though little pink ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... like them. She consented to follow their counsel. The first thing the witches did (for, as the sequel will show, they were witches deeply learned in Satan's wicked ways) was to impose on the novice a vow of secrecy; then to direct her, when going to bed, to take with her the besom, and, when her husband was asleep, to rise and come to them, leaving the besom beside him, and it would assume her appearance, so that he could ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... bush to the root of it remains, and the children eat on unhindered on the other side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no; we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again, smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next winter, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... get to the bottom of this," said Tommy, rising, "and as you are too great a coward, Corp, to tell the truth with that shameless woman glowering at you, out you go, Gavinia, and take your disgraced bairn with you. Do as you are told, you besom, for I am Captain ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... they cross their hands; and so they remain, and wither, and despair, and die. Thus when the kelp business was at an end, the Scotch Highlanders sat down in their helpless hunger, till they were swept as with a besom out of the land they cumbered. Yet what Mechi has done for his Tiptree bog on a large scale, with expensive machinery, and hired labour, might have been done by each of them on a small scale, without expense, and with his own labour. A wholesome living might be wrested by determined men from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... and then immediately narrows again, no outlet save the constricted waterway. High above stands a great lake which is held in check only by an artificial barrier, and which, if once unchained, must pour its resistless torrent through this narrow gorge like a besom of destruction overwhelming everything before it. There were all the elements of an unparalleled disaster. Years of immunity had given a feeling of security for all time without some extraordinary and unexpected ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... was done in the way of cleaning the streets and the drainage was simple, natural, and unaided by art. A few years later, however, about 1824, a beginning was made towards an improved state of things, and a man was employed to sweep the streets periodically with a besom at the munificent salary of 36s. 4d. a year! Over the seventy years that have intervened, this pioneer of our town improvements stands out clear and notable with his four-penny besom and basket. That he did good honest work with his birch ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... entered, the configuration of the streets was such as to give every aid to disciplined men as opposed to mere guerrilleros. The city is built in blocks, on the American system; the wide thoroughfares cross each other at right-angles, and all of them could be swept as with a besom by a few guns en barbette behind a breastwork at either end. In this sort of work, accuracy of aim is not called for, as in that warfare up in the mountains. If it were, not much reliance could be placed on the Republican artillery. General ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... many a benevolent woman, who, if she had lived there, would not have been so benevolent as Janet, or have kept the place half so clean. For her soul was alive and rich, and out of her soul, not education or habit, came the smallest of her virtues.—Having finished at last, she took her besom to the door, and beat it against a stone. That done, she stood looking along the path down the hill. It was that by which her sons and daughters, every Saturday, came climbing, one after the other, to her bosom, from their various ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... right angles with its seat, was so high that the sitter's head stopped two feet short of the top. This chair was of oak, and carved at the summit. There was a copper pail, that went in at the waist, holding holy water, and a little hand-besom to sprinkle it far and wide; and a long, narrow, but massive oak table, and a dwarf sticking to its rim by his teeth, his eyes glaring, and his claws in the air like a pouncing vampire. Nature, it would seem, did not make Giles a dwarf out of malice prepense; she constructed a head ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... read 'an autumn 'twas,' and thus gave the lines true point and poetry. A third notable instance, somewhat more recondite, is found in 'Coriolanus' (II. i. 59-60) where Menenius asks the tribunes in the First Folio version 'what harm can your besom conspectuities [i.e. vision or eyes] glean out of this character?' Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet 'besom' by 'bisson' (i.e. purblind), a recognised Elizabethan word which Shakespeare had already employed in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... in a sort of frenzy of disgust, but the fresh wind, sweeping his hot face like the besom of peace, soon drove away this temporary chagrin, bringing to him the best comfort life gave in those days—the gentle influence of Nature. For, just in proportion as Dan shunned humanity he courted her, and though he felt her relentlessness ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... driving blast Must glide from mortal view; Black roll the billows of the past Behind the present's blue, Fast, fast, are lessening in the light The names of high renown,— Van Tromp's proud besom fades from sight, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to the beauties of Babylon, "to contemplate the present condition of these localities, we are at first struck with astonishment at the small traces which remain of so vast and wonderful a metropolis. The broad walls of Babylon are utterly broken down. God has swept it with the besom of destruction." ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... with one of their rugged and broken sentences, in which there is neither a thought, nor word, but what is low and puerile, appear to me (if I may venture on a comparison which is not indeed very elevated, but is strictly applicable to the case in hand) to have untied a besom, that we may contemplate the scattered twigs. If, however, they wish to convince us that they really despise the species of composition which I have now recommended, let them favour us with a few lines in the taste of Isocrates, or such as we find ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... slowly, for a blanket of mist covers the earth. It is so cold that the men dare not sit down during the halts, though overborne by weariness, and they pace to and fro in the damp obscurity like ghosts. The besom of a biting wintry wind whips our skin, sweeps away and scatters our words and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... plain as life. When I saw it I went all of a didder, and thought I sud ha' fainted' for all that I'd dreamt about murdering Owd Jerry came back into my mind. But I drave a pin into my arm to rouse misen, and took the besom and swept up the ashes and lit the fire. After I'd mashed misen a cup o' tea I felt better, and got agate wi' the housewark. But, by the mass! it was a dree day for me, was yon. Ivery time I heerd the owd man hoast I thought he were boun' to dee. But he was ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... two—'the scrutiny of Nature' and 'the interpretation of Sacred Books.' It would have been a theme worthy of his intelligence to have deduced from these two sources his religion as it stands. But not another word is said about the 'Sacred Books.' Having swept with the besom of Science various 'books' contemptuously away, he does not define the Sacred residue; much less give us the reasons why he deems them sacred. [Footnote: Mr. Martineau's use of the term 'sacred' is unintentionally misleading. In his ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Chetardie, French Ambassador at Berlin (Buchholz, i. 130).] But his primary fixed resolution was to stand out of the quarrel; and he abides by that; suppresses any wishes of his own in regard to the Polish Election;—keeps ward on his own frontiers, with good military besom in hand, to sweep it out again if it intruded there. "What King you like, in God's name; only don't come over my threshold with his brabbles ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... dawn of spring touched the mountains as Madame de Ferrier and I stepped into the tunnel's mouth. The wind that goes like a besom before sunrise, swept off the fog to corners of the sky, except a few spirals which still unwound from the lake. The underground path to De Chaumont's manor descended by terraces ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... it in later days, by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly spirits of household life and of settled agricultural ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... Western. One of the most striking scenes in the history of the Eastern Church is that which took place at the condemnation of Nikon, the great Patriarch of Moscow. Turning toward his judges, he pointed to a comet then blazing in the sky, and said, "God's besom shall ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White



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