"Ploughman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the arms bare, and caps with the candles or lamps stuck in the front, lighting up the pallid grimy faces, would be fully conscious of the honour done them, and would yield to no ruddy, fustian-clad ploughman or picturesque shepherd, with his maud and crook ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... inaugurate a world of hedgerow warfare. Dorchester will march on Poole, Sherborne on Dorchester, Wimborne on both; the waggons will be fired on as they follow the highway, the trains wrecked on the lines, the ploughman will go armed into the field of tillage; and if we have not a return of ballad literature, the local press at least will celebrate in a high vein the victory of Cerne Abbas or the reverse of Toller Porcorum. At least this will not be dull; when I was younger, I could have welcomed such ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the little carriage, which was being dragged violently at the pony's heels. She had need of all her spirit. Fortunately, the road was a straight one, but there was not a soul in sight to help her, not a sower in the fields, not a ploughman, not even a boy herding cattle along the road. Her right hand still grasped the useless rein. She stared before her, while the rocking of the little carriage grew more and more violent, and the hedges and trees flew past them. How long would it be before the terrified pony shook ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... be talked of—how poor a desire! Does it matter whether it be by the gossips of this age or the next? Some men are urged on to fame by poverty—that is an excuse for their trouble; but there is no more nobleness in the motive than in that which makes yon poor ploughman sweat in the eye of Phoebus. In fact, the larger part of eminent men, instead of being inspired by any lofty desire to benefit their species or enrich the human mind, have acted or composed, without any definite object beyond ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mass. Ploughman: Farm accounts, even when kept in the most simple form, not only afford great satisfaction, but they do much to aid the farmer in his efforts to success. If at the end of the season he is able ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... of the sublime, peculiarly suited to children; accuracy of observation and distinctness of perception, are essential to this species of the sublime. In Percy's collection of ancient ballads, and in the modern poems of the Ayreshire ploughman, we may see many instances of the effect of simplicity. To preserve our pupil's taste from a false love of ornament, he must avoid, either in books or in conversation, all verbose and turgid descriptions, the use of words and epithets ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... become very still. It was that magic hour when the voices of the things of the day are hushed, and the things of the night have not yet awakened. Only at intervals the whippoorwill's call arose, like a pulse of pain. The voice of the ploughman in the adjoining field came no more to my ears; a respite from labor had come to both man and beast. The birds were still. There was no flutter of wings, no piping cry. The earth rested for a spell, and a solemn quietude stole over the ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert], who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... and mind of man. The sturdy mower, that with brawny arms Wieldeth the crooked scythe, in many a swath Cutting the flowery pride on velvet plain, Lies down at night, and in the weird[316] folds Of his wife's arms forgets his labour past. The painful mariner and careful smith, The toiling ploughman, all artificers, Most humbly yield to my dominion: Without due rest nothing is durable. Lo, thus doth Somnus conquer all the world With his most awful wand, and half the year Reigns o'er the best and proudest emperors. Only ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way. And leaves the world ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... enormous—the ground beneath his feet teeming with the tangible memories of grisly conflict, or of an old civilization that had been blotted out long ago—the swords of Roman legionaries, the bones of British heroes, coins with legends that few could read turned up by the ploughman's share. Yonder, men said, away there at Redburn, the heathen pursuers had come upon England's proto-martyr and slain the saint of God, whose bones since then had been gathered up, and were now resting in their sumptuous shrine. When the Norman ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars; while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their bones to make his bread.... In a word, a city of another ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... by which it may be drawn. The lend of the stock is in shape somewhat like that which is formed by a human foot and leg, the foot being the 'share,' which scratches up the soil. That part which corresponds to the leg is prolonged upwards into a long handle, with the help of which the ploughman guides the plough. The bar by which the plough is drawn is attached to the inner or fore side of the bend, at the ankle, as it were. Two oxen of a small kind are, as a rule, attached to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... followers, lead the host. The strange, mythical images of Ker, Eris, and Kudoimos mingle in the crowd. A third space upon the shield depicts the incidents of peaceful labour—the ploughshare passing through the field, of enameled black metal behind it, and golden before; the cup of mead held out to the ploughman when he reaches the end of the furrow; the reapers with their sheaves; the king standing in silent pleasure among them, intent upon his staff. There are the labourers in the vineyard in minutest detail; stakes of silver on which the vines hang; the dark trench ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... CLEVERNESS is required for country affairs, they leave the more room for thinking. There are great and small in every class; here and there is a ploughman that understands Burns, here and there a large-minded shopkeeper, here and there perhaps an unselfish duke. Doubtless most of the youth's ancestors would likewise have held such labour unworthy of a gentleman, and would have preferred driving to their hills a herd of lowland ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... be fed as if his stomach needed more food than ordinary stomachs, which it does not. A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman. But the rascal of a painter, poet, novelist, or other voluptuary in labor, is not content with his advantage in popular esteem over the ploughman; he also wants an advantage in money, as if there were more hours in a day spent in the studio or library than in the field; or as if ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... god, doth deface, Doth deface Lady Ceres' crown, And the tillage doth go to decay, To decay in every town; Landlords their rents so highly enhance, That Pierce, the ploughman, barefoot may dance; Well a day! Farmers that Christmas would still entertain, Scarce have wherewith themselves to ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... King Arthur, Merlin, the most learned enchanter of his time, was on a journey; and, being very weary, stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife, with great civility, immediately brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a wooden platter. Merlin could not help observing, that, although every thing within the cottage was ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... feminine appellation to those things only which are more closely identified with themselves, and by the qualities or conditions of which their own efforts, and their character as workmen, are affected. The mower calls his scythe a she, the ploughman calls his plough a she; but a prong, or a shovel, or a harrow, which passes promiscuously from hand to hand, and which is appropriated to no particular labourer, is called a ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... the men learnt for the first time what French billets were like and experienced the insanitary conditions prevailing on the small farms and the draughty and dirty barns. Looking around the countryside all seemed quiet and peaceful. The ploughman ploughed the fields, others sowed and the miners went to their daily tasks as usual. At times it was difficult to realise that the firing line was within a few miles, but the boom of the distant guns and the laden Red Cross motors indicated the proximity of ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; 45 The single crow a single caw lets fall; And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, Who snows his soft, white ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Hector, "look at these great lace-boots. I shall have to fill the soles of them full of hobnails presently. They belong to the best ploughman in the parish—John Turnbull. Don't you think it's an honour to mend boots for a man who makes the best bed for the corn ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... morning just before the break of day, I came right to a large plantation, about which I secreted myself, until the darkness of the next night began to disappear. The morning larks commenced to chirp and sing merrily—pretty soon I heard the whip crack, and the voice of the ploughman driving in the corn field. About breakfast time, I heard the sound of a horn; saw a number of slaves in the field with a white man, who I supposed to be their overseer. He started to the house before the slaves, which gave me an opportunity to ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... Peter wears a huge greatcoat threadbare and patched itself, yet carefully so disposed and secured by what buttons remain, and many supplementary pins, as to conceal the still more infirm state of his under garments. The shoes and stockings of a ploughman were, however, seen to meet at his knees with a pair of brownish, blackish breeches; a rusty-coloured handkerchief, that has been black in its day, surrounded his throat, and was an apology for linen. His hair, half grey, half black, escaped in elf-locks ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a favourite horse of which he dreamed—one which in old days he had named after Piers Ploughman, the Vision concerning whom, notwithstanding its severity on catholic abuses, he had at one ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... flowers, but remorselessly through them all the share tore its way, cutting furrow after furrow. It seemed that all the beauty was being hopelessly destroyed. But by and by harvest-time came, and the field waved with golden wheat. That was what the ploughman's faith saw ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... taste in the company of an illiterate gardener. The gardener's son, though his name was Colin, had no Arcadian simplicity, nothing which could please the classic taste of Forester, or which could recall to his mind the Eclogues of Virgil, or the golden age; the Gentle Shepherd, or the Ayrshire Ploughman. Colin's favourite holiday's diversion was playing at goff; this game, which is played with a bat loaded with lead, and with a ball, which is harder than a cricket-ball, requires much strength and dexterity. Forester ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... God, "the upper Jerusalem," a body visible in no one locality, but dispersed over the earth like wheat in chaff, held together by no declarations of doctrine, tied to no sacraments, dependent on no earthly Lieutenant or Vice-gerent, and on no university-trained Doctors, which recognizes Prince and Ploughman alike, and secures its unity through Christ and through the invisible cement of Love. "To this Assembly," writes Weigel, "doe I stick; in this holy Church doe I rejoice to be. . . . Jesus Christ is my Head, my Teacher. He is everywhere with me and in me, and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... ploughman drawing near his end, Call'd in his sons apart from every friend, And said, "When of your sire bereft, The heritage our fathers left Guard well, nor sell a single field. A treasure in it is conceal'd: The place, precisely, I don't know, But industry will serve to show. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... whets; and kine Move slowly, breathing sweetness, toward the pail Their milking-maid is jingling, as she calls "Hi Strawberry and Blossom, hither Cows;" While slung against the upland with his team The ploughman dimly like a phantom glides: What time that noisy spot of life, the lark, Climbs, shrill with ecstasy, the trembling air; And "Cuckoo, Cuckoo," baffling whence it comes, Shouts the blithe egotist who cries himself; And every hedge and coppice ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... not I," said Miss Hassard promptly. "He has thought of me several times—he has weighed my qualifications. But the man is in love with Lucy as honestly as a ploughman could be. Don't you think I've tough luck?" she said, resting her elbow on the table and her chin on her palm, her keen gray eyes following Miss Dunbar and her lover as they loitered under the shadow of the church. "I am as young ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... his absence the Numidian lion might be prevailed on to become the yoke-fellow of the Egyptian crocodile; and a farm which, ploughed by such a pair, should extend from the upper cataract to the Pillars of Hercules, might have charms even for a philosopher. But while the ploughman is without a nymph, Arcadia is imperfect. What were Dionusos without his Ariadne, Ares without Aphrodite, Zeus without Hera? Even Artemis has her Endymion; Athens alone remains unwedded; but only because Hephaestus was too rough a wooer. Such is not he who now offers to the representative of Athene ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the Thrums doctor, whose practice extends into the glens, made repeated attempts to reach his distant patients, twice driving so far into the dreary waste that he could neither go on nor turn back. A ploughman who contrived to gallop ten miles for him did not get home for a week. Between the town, which is nowadays an agricultural centre of some importance, and the outlying farms communication was cut off for a month; and I heard subsequently of one farmer who did not see a human being, unconnected ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... privilege of some kinds of labour, that they are compatible with thoughts of higher things. At the book-keeper's desk, the clerk must think of nothing but his work; he is chained to it as the galley-slave to his oar; the shoemaker may be poet or mystic, or both; the ploughman may turn a good furrow and a good verse together; Richard could at once use hands and thoughts. It troubled his protectors that they could not send him to college, but they comforted themselves that it would not be too late when he returned to his natural ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... 'Note o' the Gate,' sleeps sound under a green heap of turf. To trace the Teviotdale dynasty of song further in the female line, Mrs. Cockburn's niece, Mrs. Scott, was that 'guidwife o' Wauchope-house,' who addressed an ode to her 'canty, witty, rhyming ploughman,' Robert Burns, with an invitation to visit her on the Border—an invitation which the poet accepted, and on the way thither, as he relates, chanced upon 'Esther (Easton), a very remarkable woman for reciting poetry of all ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... appearance, by a writer who has since matched himself very exactly with an audience of his own kind. A stranger freak of burgess criticism is everyday fare in the odd world peopled by the biographers of Robert Burns. The nature of Burns, one would think, was simplicity itself; it could hardly puzzle a ploughman, and two sailors out of three would call him brother. But he lit up the whole of that nature by his marvellous genius for expression, and grave personages have been occupied ever since in discussing the dualism of his character, and professing to find some dark mystery ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Sometime walking, not unseen, By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate Where the great Sun begins his state, Robed in flames and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight; While the ploughman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrowed land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landskip round it measures: ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... was placed in S. Croce in Florence, below the scene of the child being restored to life by S. Francis, painted by Taddeo Gaddi, and he wished to have the opinion of Filippo about this work; but he repented, for Filippo answered that he had placed a ploughman on the Cross; whence there arose the saying, "Take wood and make one thyself," as it is related at length in the Life of Donato. Whereupon Filippo, who would never get angry, whatever might be said to him, although he might have reason for anger, stayed in seclusion for ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... ran over the cliffs and about him swept brown and naked fields under the winter sky. Here and there a mewing gull flew overhead and the only sign of other life was a ploughman crawling behind his horses with more sea fowl fluttering in his wake. Brendon came at last to a white gate facing on the highway and found that he had reached his destination. Upon the gate "Crow's Nest" was written in letters stamped ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... gone out to the West with the intention of working hard and using his hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, in fact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had been galling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness of themselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter. This man ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Through this sepultural blight A breath runs living, new; Unburdening light As when the flame-borne prophet on The Syrian ploughman threw A people's dawn. The world is Heaven worth, The cradle earth Casts orphanhood, a Bethlehem God-swung From crimson grapple with his lyric young. Here triumph I, so low, Knowing that Lust shall go, With whited, anarch train,— Shall pass, this curbless, vain Usurping deity that would ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... turned gray, despite his belligerent efficiencies, when his wife, hearing the clank of the ox-yoke as it was flung down in the shed outside, divined the home-coming of the ploughman and his team, and slipped out to the barn with her news. She realized, with a strange enlightenment as to her own mental processes, what angry jealousy the look on his face would have roused in her only so short a time ago—jealousy ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of the farm enclosures had its outer walls, its miniature turrets, and here and there its rounded bastions. Each farm, apparently, in the olden days had been a citadel unto itself. The Breton had been a very troublesome neighbor for many a long century; every ploughman, until a few hundred years ago, was quite likely to turn soldier at a second's notice—every true Norman must look to his own sword to defend his hearth-stone. Such is the story those stone turrets ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... when they went about their respective avocations for a couple of hours before breakfast. As soon as the cows were milked, they and the heifers and calves were driven off to the pastures, while the ploughman yoked a span of ten oxen to the plough, and set out to break up some new land, and very hard work it was. Although the soil was tolerably rich, it was baked by the sun, and as hard as a rock, and in ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... Finland. Less than half a century ago the whole country—at least the whole educated country—was still Swedish at heart and Swedish in language. From Sweden Finland had borrowed its literature and its laws until Russia stepped in, when the Finn began to assert himself. The ploughman is now educated and raising his voice with no uncertain sound on behalf of his own country and his language, and to-day the greatest party in the Parliament are ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... formation, which the old ice sheet had broken and shouldered and transported about. About every five or six acres had loose stones and rock enough to put a rock-bottomed wall around it and still leave enough in and on the soil to worry the ploughman and the mower. All the farms in that section reposing in the valleys and bending up and over the broad-backed hills are checker-boards of stone walls, and the right- angled fields, in their many colours of green and brown and yellow and red, give a striking ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones. Somehow or other I find the strain which Handel has wedded to the words "There the ploughman near at hand," has got into my head and there is no getting it out again. How marvellously old ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, While the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch, that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide; ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... friends, this is the true philosophy, the philosophy which Christ preaches to us all—to old and young, rich and poor, ploughman and scholar, maid, wife, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... his linen milking-pinner he wore a dark velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a starched white shirt. Without the milking-gear nobody could have guessed what he was. He might with equal probability have been an eccentric landowner or a gentlemanly ploughman. That he was but a novice at dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time he had spent upon the milking ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... pits twenty feet deep and more than an acre in extent, and, after carefully preparing the soil, planted grain or vegetables. Their method of ploughing was primitive indeed. Six or eight men were attached by ropes to a strong stake, to which was fastened a horizontal piece of wood upon which the ploughman might set his foot to force the sharp point into the earth as it was dragged along, while women followed after to break up the clods ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... with grains or grass, and orchards bending beneath their burdens, this enlarging prosperity must be maintained; and on the steamships, and the telegraph lines, which interweave us with all the world. The swart miner must do his part for it; the ingenious workman, in whatever department; the ploughman in the field, and the fisherman on the banks; the man of science, putting Nature to the question; the laborer, with no other capital than his muscle; the sailor on the sea, wherever commerce opens ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... his holy songs heard? What the pious Catherine Zell of Strasburg says of beautiful spiritual songs in her hymn-book is true of him:—'The journeyman mechanic at his work, the servant-maid washing her dishes, the ploughman and vine-dresser in the fields, the mother by her weeping infant in the cradle, sing them.' High and low, poor and rich alike, find them equally consoling, equally edifying; in all stations, among young and old, there are examples to be found ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... sphere of life is offensive in another. A dirty smock frock and a soiled face in a ploughman's child who has been swinging on rustic gates a long summer morning or rolling down the slopes of hills, or grubbing in the soil of his small garden, may remind us, not unpleasantly, of one of Gainsborough's pictures; but we look for ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... shuffle-board." Henry observed, "Yet you gownsmen should be best at such exercises, which are not meet for men who are more stirring." The tutor, a little irritated, said, "I am meet for whipping of boys." "You vaunt, then," retorted the prince, "that which a ploughman or cart-driver can do better than you." "I can do more," said the tutor, "for I can govern foolish children." On which the prince, who, in his respect for his tutor, did not care to carry the jest farther, rose from the table, and in a low voice to those near him said, "he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... his plea for the preservation of battlefields. Now, Europe is very rich in battlefields, many of the most fertile sections having been fought over many times. But the ravages of agriculture are everywhere seen. There is no such leveler as the ploughman. Often when one has come to refresh his mind with the events of one terrible day, he finds that there is nothing whatever to remind him of what happened. For centuries there has been ploughing and harvesting. Nature takes so kindly to these peaceful ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... aradores,* (* Literally the ploughers.) which get under the skin. We could distinguish with a lens nothing but streaks, or parallel and whitish furrows. It is the form of these furrows, that has obtained for the insect the name of ploughman. A mulatto woman was sent for, who professed to be thoroughly acquainted with all the little insects that burrow in the human skin; the chego, the nuche, the coya, and the arador; she was the curandera, or surgeon of the place. She promised ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... symbolized in a myth which represents Vertumnus as metamorphosing himself into a variety of different forms in order to gain the affection of Pomona, who so loved her vocation that she abjured all thoughts of marriage. He first appears to her as a ploughman, typifying Spring; then as a reaper, to represent Summer; afterwards as a vine-gatherer, to indicate Autumn; and finally as a gray-haired old woman, symbolical of the snows of Winter; but it was not until he assumed his ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... early, Jack asked how he'd be employed that day. "You are to be holding the plough in that fallow, outside the paddock." The master went over about nine o'clock to see what kind of a ploughman was Jack, and what did he see but the little boy driving the bastes, and the sock and coulter of the plough skimming along the sod, and Jack pulling ding-dong ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... He was fond of me; he loved originality in any shape. His great recreation, after the fatigue of business, was stealing into the country, entering a clean cottage, where there was a tidy woman and a nicely-scoured table, and there he would eat bread and cheese like any ploughman. He detested routs, and always sat down to plain dinners. He never ate before he went to the House; but when any thing important was to be discussed, he was in the habit of taking a glass of port wine with a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... while I was at dinner, and sat while I ate my beef-steak. A gourmand would think me much at a loss, coming back to my ploughman's meal of boiled beef and Scotch broth, from the rather recherche table at Abbotsford, but I have no philosophy in my carelessness on that score. It is natural—though I am no ascetic, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... shook it at them, crying out, "Wait, ye accursed peasant boors, I, too, will judge ye for your sins!" But seeing her cousin, Jobst Bork, present, she screamed yet louder—"Eh! thou thick ploughman, hath the devil brought thee here too? Art thou not ashamed to accuse thy own kinswoman? Wait, I will give thee something to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... did it, too, with so much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached at the squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock, the churchwarden, as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger. As for Mr. Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any one in the parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Gwladys, "the love is dead. I feel no more interest in you now than I do in yonder ploughman." ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... hinds, and clear All scores, and so to end the year: But walk'st about thine own dear bounds, Not envying others larger grounds: For well thou know'st 'tis not th' extent Of land makes life, but sweet content. When now the cock (the ploughman's horn) Calls forth the lily-wristed morn, Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go, Which though well soil'd, yet thou dost know That the best compost for the lands Is the wise master's feet and hands. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... to ask if he had been sea-sick; what she said sounded like an inquiry about some more or less frequent indisposition, though Mr. Van Torp looked as strong as a ploughman. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... very small balsa not over eight feet long, barely capable of supporting the weight of one man. On the other hand, large balsas constructed for use in crossing the rough waters of the deeper portions of the lake are capable of carrying a dozen people and their luggage. Once I saw a ploughman and his team of oxen being ferried across the lake on a bulrush raft. To give greater security two balsas are sometimes fastened together in the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... oppression and persecution grows more heavy, and the people's temper more short; every day, by the methods that he is pursuing, King James brings himself into deeper hatred. This hatred is spreading. It was the business of myself and those others to help it on, until from the cottage of the ploughman the infection of anger should have spread to the mansion of the squire. Had Your Grace but given me time, as I entreated you, and as you promised me, you might have marched to Whitehall with scarce the shedding of a drop of blood; had Your Grace but waited until we were ready, England ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... his saw, and he made a plough. When the plough was made he put a hole in the beam of it, and he said to the lion to go in under the plough till he'd see was he any good of a ploughman. He placed the lion's tail in the hole he had made for it, and then clapped in a peg, and the lion was not able to draw ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... ploughman. He has been insolent this morning, and he is the biggest fellow in the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Solomon declares again and again, that prudence and foresight are the gifts of God; and God's gifts are surely meant to be used. Isaiah, too, tells us that the common work of the farm, tilling the ground, sowing, and reaping, were taught to men by God; and says of the ploughman, that 'His God doth instruct him to discretion and doth teach him.' Neither can God mean us to sit idle with folded hands waiting to be fed by miracles. Would He have given to man reason, and skill, and the power of bettering his mortal condition by ten thousand instructions ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... The ploughman, tho' he labour hard, Yet on the holy-day Heigh trolollie lollie foe, etc. No emperor so merrily Does pass his time away: Then ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... church's northern slope. As when, Some father, absent long, returns at last, His children rush loud-voiced from field to house, And cling about his knees; and they that mark— Old reaper, bent no more, with hook in hand, Or ploughman, leaning 'gainst the old blind horse— Beholding wonder not; so to that grave Rushed they; so clung. Around that grave ere long Their own were ranged. That plague which smote the sire Spared not his sons. With ministering ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... chewing the fibres, a slow and painstaking task. Creasing the hide along its whole length, the women take it in their hands and chew their way along the bend from one end of the skin to the other, working their way back along the next half-inch line. Watching them, one is reminded of the ploughman driving his team afield up one furrow and down ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... as stated on p. 38, was in preparation. Among works that Mr. Morris had some thought of printing may also be mentioned The Bible, Gesta Romanorum, Malory's Morte Darthur, The High History of the San Graal (translated by Dr. Sebastian Evans), Piers Ploughman, Huon of Bordeaux, Caxton's Jason, a Latin Psalter, The Prymer or Lay Folk's Prayer-Book, Some Mediaeval English Songs and Music, The Pilgrim's Progress, and a Book of Romantic Ballads. He was engaged on the selection of the Ballads, which he spoke of as the finest poems in ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... ran his finger down the advertisement column of his newspaper—"Lost, stolen or strayed, 10S. reward;" he looked suspiciously at Pig-wig. Then he stood up in the trap, and whistled for the ploughman. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... whole plateau having a smartish inclination to the east; one of the tributaries in a handsome little web of silver hanging in the forest. Twice I was startled by birds; one that barked like a dog; another that whistled loud ploughman's signals, so that I vow I was thrilled, and thought I had fallen among runaway blacks, and regretted my cutlass which I had lost and left behind while taking bearings. A good many fishes in the brook, and many cray-fish; one of the last with a queer glow- worm head. Like ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass: And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king; For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod. Blind and dense ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... scrape. "We have come to you with a request. You have heard, of course, already. . . . There is a suspicion that your brother has somehow been murdered. God's will, you know. . . . Death no one can escape, neither Tsar nor ploughman. Can you not assist us with some fact, something ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and the Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Dr. John Brown and Thomas Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay and Sir Walter; and is it not a proof of the Wizard's magic art, that side by ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... A rousing fire of peats and dried heather was blazing on the hearth, around which the family were gathered in a half circle. In an armchair, with a open book on his knee, sat Carver himself. By his side sat his wife knitting a stocking, the firelight glinting on her fair hair. Near to her were a ploughman and a herd boy, also a young woman who did the light field work on the farm and milked the cows, made butter, and helped in the house. Tom sat by the fire opposite his father, and I could see that he was polishing with a piece of leather one of his silver coins. Thora, whose silken ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... was one Barbara Napier, alias Douglas, a person of some rank; Geillis Duncan, a very active witch; and about thirty other poor creatures of the lowest condition—among the rest, and doorkeeper to the conclave, a silly old ploughman, called as his nickname Graymeal, who was cuffed by the devil for saying simply, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... any one did violence in his presence he had to pay a great fine—a hundred cows, and a white bull with red ears, for every cantrev the king ruled; a rod of gold as long as the king himself, and as thick as his little finger; and a plate of gold, as broad as the king's face, and as thick as a ploughman's nail. ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... an unbridled Englishman.—Alas! the soldiers who fell under the sword of the Britons are not yet reduced to dust: the labourer in turning up his field, still draws from the bosom of the earth their whitened bones; while the ploughman, with tears of tenderness and gratitude, still recollects that his fields, now covered with rich harvests, have been moistened with French blood. While every thing around the inhabitants of this country animates them to speak of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... by whom, since he had no wits for anything better, he was set to pull at waggon and plough just as if he were a cart-horse; and, indeed, he was almost as strong as one. To make him work, carter and ploughman used to crack their whips over his back; and Little Toonie took it as the most natural thing in the world, because his brain was full of moonshine, so that he understood nothing ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... whom wise folk avoided. Then, as I glanced about, I saw a sentry standing not thirty yards from me, but well above me, on the rampart top. He was no gipsy he was an ordinary farmer's lad, with the walk of a ploughman. His sleeves, which were rolled back, showed me a sun-burnt pair of arms, such as no gipsy ever had. What puzzled me about him was his heavy double-barrelled pistol, which he carried in his right hand, with something of a military cock, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... meaning by an example. A man—I do not say a geologist, but simply a man, squire or ploughman—sees a small valley, say one of the side-glens which open into the larger valleys in the Windsor forest district. He wishes ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Mr. Leyton, during a visit to him in May. George West was then head ploughman to a neighboring farmer, one of the cleanest, best behaved, and most respected laborers in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... by millions of boys today. The names of the other three are lost to fame. One of them gushed and Jesus cooled off his emotions. The second and third wanted to procrastinate and hid behind social obligations. Note that epigram about the ploughman. It is a splendid expression of intelligent and concentrated energy. You can't drive a straight furrow while you "rubber." You've got to ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... she said, "have come from the very lowest ranks of life. There was Burns, a ploughman; and Hugh Miller, a stonemason; and plenty of ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... to do this we must look to the causes of the difference in the extent of the trade in the periods above referred to. Doing this, we shall find that from 1820 to 1830 there was a decided tendency toward bringing the artisan to the side of the ploughman; whereas from 1833 to 1840 the tendency was very strong in the opposite direction, and so continued until 1842, at which time a change took place, and continued until near the close of the decennial period, when our present revenue system ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Are greatest to discourage all our drifts; Yet, when the pride of Cynthia is at full, She wanes again; and so shall his, I hope; For we have here the chief selected men Of twenty several kingdoms at the least; Nor ploughman, priest, nor merchant, stays at home; All Turkey is in arms with Callapine; And never will we sunder camps and arms Before himself or his be conquered: This is the time that must eternize me For conquering the tyrant ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... animals, is like double distilled spirits, and so requires much labor to break, grind, and digest it. And, indeed, if day-laborers, and handicraftsmen were allowed the high, strong food of men of condition, and the quiet and much-thinking persons were confined to the farmer and ploughman's food, it would be ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Puritan gospel, but it was presented in such a form and in such simple, idiomatic phrase, as to commend it as no less a gospel to his own generation: besides his sermons as published, other works were also widely circulated; special mention may be made of "John Ploughman's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Alas! the soldiers who fell under the sword of the Britons are not yet reduced to dust; the laborer, in turning up his fields, still draws from the bosom of the earth their whitened bones, while the ploughman, with tears of tenderness and gratitude, still recollects that his fields, now covered with rich harvests, have been moistened with French blood; while everything around the inhabitants of this country animates them ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the first peasant they encountered, and causing him to exchange clothes with one of the fugitives, who would thus be enabled to enter a public-house and provide for their mutual necessities. Paul agreed to this proposition, and accordingly they watched their opportunity and caught a ploughman. Augustus stripped him of his frock, hat, and worsted stockings; and Paul, hardened by necessity and companionship, helped to tie the poor ploughman to a tree. They then continued their progress for about an hour, and, as the shades ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have examined, in which his signature, written probably by his secretary, or his title of Marques, in later life substituted for his name, is garnished with a flourish at the ends, executed in as bungling a manner as if done by the hand of a ploughman. Yet we must not estimate this deficiency as we should in this period of general illumination, - general, at least, in our own fortunate country. Reading and writing, so universal now, in the beginning of the sixteenth ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... ways afloat are better, or just as good; but, d'ye see, as some day or other I suppose he will have to go on shore for a spell, he'd be just like a fish out of water if he has never been before—not know what to do with hisself any more than a bear in a china shop, or a ploughman aboard ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... Cobbler, thrusting his awl with great vehemence through the leather destined to the repair of a ploughman's boot. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not only of terrible conflict, but of defeat and falls, through the discipline of repentance, to holiness and the blessedness which comes with it. The Red Cross Knight, St. George of England, whose name Georgos, the Ploughman, is dwelt upon, apparently to suggest that from the commonalty, the "tall clownish young men," were raised up the great champions of the Truth,—though sorely troubled by the wiles of Duessa, by the craft of the arch-sorcerer, by the force and pride of the great powers of the Apocalyptic Beast ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... John Ploughman's Talk, says the author, Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, the famous London preacher, "has not only obtained an immense circulation, but it has exercised an influence for good." As to the "influence for good," the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... rich together: and while, therefore, she thus adorns the innermost rocks of her hills, to tempt your investigation, or indulge your luxury,—she paints, far more carefully, the outsides of the hills, which are for the eyes of the shepherd and the ploughman. I spoke just now of the effect in the roofs of our villages of their purple slates: but if the slates are beautiful even in their flat and formal rows on house-roofs, much more are they beautiful on the rugged crests and flanks ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... not make any one lose patience," said Mowbray, "to hear her quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his dinner, or without his usual potation of ale. His comrades would cry 'poor fellow!' and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their bicker without scruple, till his ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... people. The common ambition of all the younger generation was to get to London by almost any means, and in almost any capacity. There was not a household that had not children or relatives in London. The young ploughman went to London as a carter or ostler; the milkmaid as a servant. The village carpenter was invariably a middle-aged or an old man, secretly despised by his apprentice, if he had one, for his contentment with his lot. One saw very few young people in the village street, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... the trio came upon a group of the idle boys of the village who were assembled in front of an inclosed paddock containing Farmer Giles's brindled bull, a savage animal, whose implacable viciousness was the talk of the place; not even the ploughman, with whom he was more familiar than anyone else, daring to approach him without the ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... friendly hand thy life hath ta'en! There is a spot the village near Where dwelt the Muses' worshipper, Two pines have joined their tangled roots, A rivulet beneath them shoots Its waters to the neighbouring vale. There the tired ploughman loves to lie, The reaping girls approach and ply Within its wave the sounding pail, And by that shady rivulet A ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... was I, dear sir, to hear Your lecture on that subject dear, So grand and superhuman; For all the world doth pay regard To Bobbie Burns, the Scottish bard, The patriot and the ploughman. ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... cannot give him more than he can use so he will not ask for more, and will not take it: it is true that his work may be more special than another's, but it is not more necessary if you have organized labour properly; the ploughman and the fisherman are as necessary to society as the scientist or the artist, I will not say more necessary: neither is the difficulty of producing the more special and excellent work at all proportionate to its speciality or excellence: the higher workman produces ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... Russian has seen three or four times over. But it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled.... But whatever was our conduct—if every ploughman was as great a hero as he who was called from his oxen to save Rome from her enemies—I should still say that, at such a crisis, you want the affections of all your subjects in both islands. There is no spirit which you must alienate, no heart you must avert. Every man must feel ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... The ploughman stopped his team, to watch The train, as swift it thundered by; Some distant glimpse of life to catch, He strains his eager, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the night he separated from that other—just after the battle of Liaoyang, the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the battle— the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to carry to America. He wants you to carry his story of this service—asked me to give it to you when you were better—to take to America with yours. 'Just a picture,' he said. 'It may be all wrong, but I see it so ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground? No—but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... that constantly hover round the minds of the timid." "The English and Scottish terms, 'Puck,' 'Bogle', are the same as the German 'Spuk' and the Danish 'Spogelse,' without the sibilant aspiration. These words are general names for any kind of spirit, and correspond to the 'pouk' of Piers Ploughman. In Danish 'spog' means a joke, trick, or prank, and hence the character of Robin Goodfellow. In Iceland Puki is regarded as an evil sprite; and in the language of that country, 'at pukra' means both to make a murmuring noise and to steal ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... ploughman lad, And hey my merry ploughman; Of a' the trades that I do ken, Commend ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... historian; e.g., was it the custom in those unhappy days to disinter, after a time, the slightly-buried corpses, and deposit the bones in the consecrated vault?—or was this the accidental work of some antiquarian sexton of the "Old Mortality" species?—or was the pious attention suggested by the ploughman's later discoveries— ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... Mr Beauchamp," said the chairman—the pale-faced son of a burly ploughman—rising. "Your departure will scarcely satisfy us now. Gentlemen, form yourselves in a double row, and grace the exit of a disgrace. I leave it to yourselves to kick him or not as you may think proper. But I think myself the way is to be merciful to the confounded. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... share'. G. M. H. thought well of this sonnet and wrote on Sept. 28, 1887: 'I have been touching up some old sonnets you have never seen and have within a few days done the whole of one, I hope, very good one and most of another; the one finished is a direct picture of a ploughman, without afterthought. But when you read it let me know if there is anything like it in Walt Whit- man; as perhaps there may be, and I should be sorry for that.' And again on Oct. 11, '87: 'I will enclose the sonnet on Harry Ploughman, in which burden-lines (they might be ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... they learnt what I knew I should have learnt there; I knew not then that "the eye only sees that which it brings with it the power of seeing." When will their eyes be opened? When will priests go forth into the highways and the hedges, and preach to the ploughman and the gipsy the blessed news, that there too, in every thicket and fallow-field, is the house of God,—there, too, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... him, and wearing a pale and serious face as he kept his march. There were yellow stains on the back of his coat, and the man who restored the horse found a smashed pumpkin in the broken bushes beside the road. Ichabod never returned to Tarrytown, and when Brom Bones, a stout young ploughman and taphaunter, married Katrina, people made bold to say that he knew more about the galloping Hessian than any one else, though they believed that he never had reason to be jealous ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... ere the sun had cleared the feathery tops Of the fir-thicket on the eastward hill, His horses leaned and laboured. Each great hand Held rein and plough-stilt in one guiding grasp— No ploughman there would brook a helper. Proud With a true ploughman's pride—nobler, I think, Than statesman's, ay, or poet's, or painter's pride, For little praise will come that he ploughs well— He did plough ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... friend and foe are of one stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff; and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of forms are unimportant. "You are fit" (says the supreme Krishna to a sage) "to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. That which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... your grace To pity my distress. There is an unknown thief That robs the commonwealth, and makes me and my Poor wife and children beg for maintenance. The time hath been, my lord, in diebus illis, That the ploughman's coat was of good homespun russet cloth, Whereof neither I nor my servants had no want, Though now both they and I want, And all by this unknown farmer; For there cannot be an acre of ground to be sold, But he will find money to buy it: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... sunlight. And here were the light-house-keeper and his wife, delighted to see strange faces and most hospitably inclined; insomuch that Lavender, who cared little for luncheon at any time, was constrained to take as much bread and cheese and butter and whisky as would have made a ploughman's dinner. It was a strange sort of meal this, away out at the end of the world, as it were. The snug little room might have been in the Marylebone road: there were photographs about, a gay label on the whisky-bottle, and other signs of an advanced civilization; but outside ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... pastoral life that constitutes the basis of this picture. The principle of division of labour exists there in its lowest stages of development. It is assumed as a common and proper thing to employ a shepherd or a ploughman in serving his master at table—a practice entirely unknown among us. 2. The servitude in the instance supposed was not a voluntary limited engagement, but a species of slavery: the master's control was much more absolute and complete than it is among us. The servant's toil might ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... progress and industry is beneficial to birds, and promotes their comfort and multiplication, never saw the robin and the purple grakle following the plough on a summer's morning. The ploughman is not more punctually afield than his unbidden but welcome feathered attendants. They are ahead of him, perched patiently in the trees that dot fence or hedgerow. They see the team afar off, and as the gate rattles in opening for its admission the glad tidings is sent down the line ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... worthy Giroudeau, with a skull as polished as my knee, forty-eight years, a big stomach, a face like a ploughman, and a nose like a potato, can get a ballet-girl, I ought to be the lover of the first actress in Paris. Where does one find such ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... month of May."—First printed in "The Honorable Entertainment given to the Queen's Majesty in Progress at Elvetham in Hampshire, by the Right Honorable the Earl of Hertford," 1591, under the title of "The Ploughman's Song." ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... Oh, tired of books,' said Jack, 'I long for meadows green, And woods, where shadowy violets Nod their cool leaves between; I long to see the ploughman stride His darkening acres o'er, To hear the hoarse sea-waters drive Their billows 'gainst the shore; I long to watch the sea-mew wheel Back to her rock-perched mate; Or, where the breathing cows are housed, Lean dreaming o'er the gate. Something has gone, and ink and print Will never bring ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... general. We see it reflected in a remarkable poem of the time, "The Vision of Piers Ploughman," in which the unfortunate position of the peasant is vividly portrayed.[185] This is only the most notable example of a great number of pamphlets, some in prose and some in bad verse, which were calculated to make the people more discontented than ever. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... horses, bullocks, or heifers. Bullocks and heifers are, however, more commonly used than horses, though it is no unusual sight to see a horse and a heifer yoked together. There is no boy to drive; but the ploughman, as in Scotland, at once holds the stilts of the plough, and with his voice, and a long halter, guides the cattle. With respect to the harrows, I saw little difference between them and our English implements, except that those in Germany are lighter, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... familiar with Gray's line in the immortal Elegy—"The ploughman homeward plods his weary way." This line can be paraphrased to read 18 different ways. Here ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... country house after country house, church after church, appeared before his eyes in the autumn sunlight, among the hedgerows and the coverts that were all brown and gold; and far away on the rising uplands the slow ploughman drove, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or at best is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendour, upon what is so ill acquired; and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labours so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than theirs? For as the beasts ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... stopping at home because the wind is in the east. "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold." If the ploughman means to succeed he must count on suffering; and if the devil cannot find anyone on his side to oppose, he will raise up some imbecile Christian to do so, who by some sneer or cold criticism, will try to keep the plough idle. Instead of looking which way the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes; But still the lover wonders what they are, Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake! break thro' your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... and bronzes that we have in Italy are marred and injured. The head of Jupiter is cracked; the Venus di Milo has no arms; Aphrodite has been repaired with plaster; Apollo has lost a part of his neck and one leg. From time to time an old marble is dug up in a field, where some ploughman has chanced upon the treasure. Owners hid their beautiful statues, ivories and bronzes, to save them from the vandals. Unfortunately, the modern Huns rushed into the French towns, riding in automobiles, and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast to our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-loving ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems impossible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should have been thus forgotten. Even the educated and intelligent ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares present times with past, often praises his parents' happiness, and talks of the old race as full of piety."—Lucretius, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... last provoked into despair. On every side they rose in multitudes, armed with rustic weapons, and with irresistible fury. The ploughman became a foot soldier, the shepherd mounted on horseback, the deserted villages and open towns were abandoned to the flames, and the ravages of the peasants equalled those of the fiercest barbarians. [20] They asserted the natural ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... yet there was no ploughman nor rain, yet a mist arose from the earth; so where there is not the word of the gospel, there is yet sufficiency of light, to teach men how to govern themselves in civil and natural society. But this is only "a mist," men cannot gospelly grow by this; therefore, as in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had no idea I could seem clumsy! I feel like a great ploughman. I wish I were not ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... leap beyond their shadows. Hard work will not do everything: a man can only accomplish what he was born fit for. Many, in the first flush of ambition doomed to wreck, are blind to the fact that it is not in every ploughman to be a poet, nor in every prize-student to be a philosopher. Nature does half: after all perhaps the larger half. Genius has been inadequately defined as "an infinite capacity for taking trouble"; no amount of pumping can draw more water than is in the well. Himself in "the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... World,—that part of it which is the seat of ancient civilization! The stakes of the Britons' stockades are still standing in the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns up an old Saxon's bones, and beneath them is a tessellated pavement of the time of the Caesars. In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of yesterday,—Rome, under her kings, is but an intruding new-comer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... grounds together one day, the latter espied at a distance something on a stile. As they drew near, they perceived it was the tanner's dog, which, in attempting to leap the wall, had left the clog on the other side, and was thereby almost strangled. The ploughman, knowing the enmity which the dog had to his master, proposed to despatch him by knocking him on the head; but the latter was unwilling to kill a creature which he knew was useful to his friend. Instead ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... sometimes continued for days together; the fields for miles around were under water, and the ducks and buffaloes enjoyed themselves amazingly. All along the road to Macassar, ploughing was daily going on in the mud and water, through which the wooden plough easily makes its way, the ploughman holding the plough-handle with one hand while a long bamboo in the other serves to guide the buffaloes. These animals require an immense deal of driving to get them on at all; a continual shower of exclamations is kept up at them, and "Oh! ah! Gee! ugh!" are to be heard in various keys and ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... is a pleasant exercise of fancy to imagine Chaucer leaning over the rail of one of the upper galleries to watch the assembling of his nine-and-twenty "sondry folk." They are, as J. R. Green has said, representatives of every class of English society from the noble to the ploughman. "We see the 'verray-perfight gentil knight' in cassock and coat of mail, with his curly-headed squire beside him, fresh as the May morning, and behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and hood of green with a mighty bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics light up for ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... comprehend. It was an odd symptom of the thoroughness with which her life was welded into his, that he alone knew her as weak, hysteric, needing help at times. Gaunt or her father would have told you her nerves were as strong as a ploughman's. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and in it Dr. Frazer finds a clear expression of the idea of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form. "Often it is kept till sowing-time in spring, when part of it is mixed with the seed corn and part given to the ploughman and plough-horses or plough-oxen to eat, in the expectation of a good harvest." In some parts of the Esthonian island of Oesel the cake has not the form of a boar, but bears the same name, and on New Year's Day is given to the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... he grew familiar with all the goings on at the farm, and drew nearer to a true relation with the earth that nourishes all. Where the soil was not too heavy, the ploughman would set him on the back of the near horse, and there he would ride in triumph to the music of the ploughman's whistle behind. His was not the pomp of the destroyer who rides trampling, but the pomp of the saviour ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... would cost in England, immediately makes his purchase, settles, and begins his operations. Here his eyes are soon opened. He must send to England for all his implements; and even then his French labourers neither can or will learn the use of them. An English ploughman becomes necessary; the English ploughman accordingly comes, but shortly becomes miserable amongst French habits ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... through the use of unsuitable food. By unsuitable food, we mean not so much food that is bad in itself, but rather that which is not suited to the temperament or work of the eater, or to the climate and circumstances in which he finds himself. A ploughman or fisherman, for example, may thrive on diet which will inevitably produce disease in the system of one whose work confines him to the house for the most of his time. One condition of a healthy life is, therefore, careful consideration of our work and circumstances before deciding on our diet. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... THIS ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: "At Mrs. Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he, "I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond "The ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... a fraction of an inheritance, or of a sum hereafter to be paid, and is the guarantee and pledge that the whole shall one day be handed over to the man who has received the foretaste of it in the 'earnest.' The soldier's shilling, the ploughman's 'arles,' the clod of earth and tuft of grass which, in some forms of transfer, were handed over to the purchaser, were all the guarantee that the rest was going to come. So the great future is sealed to us by the small present and the experiences of the Christian ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and other extravagances, the genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised; but who, through Industry and Frugality, have maintained their standing. In which case, it appears plainly that A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees, as Poor RICHARD says. Perhaps they have had a small estate left them, which they knew not the getting of. They think 'tis day! and will never be night!; ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... minutes after the main occurrence, he could not help fancying that someone was breathing in his face. The Rev. E. F. Stark-Potter had heard, several times, a sound like "Woe, woe," which he attributed at first to some ploughman calling to his horses; subsequent inquiry had proved, however, that, on the day in question, no ploughing was being done in the neighbourhood. All the witnesses concurred in the statement that ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks |
