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Sward   /swɔrd/   Listen
Sward

noun
1.
Surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and grass roots.  Synonyms: greensward, sod, turf.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sward" Quotes from Famous Books



... he bade give over: / they led the chargers out: There was seen all shattered / many a boss well-wrought, And many a stone full costly / lay there upon the sward From erstwhile shining shield-bands, / now broken ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... Over a low range of hills with a very steep descent to Chargle standing on the left bank of the Pohroo river. Not finding a good place on that side I forded the river, which is not more than two feet deep, and encamped on smooth green sward under a walnut tope on the other bank. Fine view from the top of the hill of the level valley through which the Pohroo runs, with the broad Jhelum shining like silver in the distance. This plain is laid out in open fields, and lacks trees except round the numerous villages. The surrounding ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... them. Thinking a day in the sunshine and fresh air might improve them, I took them all out of the house, and carried them a few at a time down to the small lawn, as it was nice and open, placing them promiscuously down on the green sward; and a funny lot they looked. Fish of all kinds, condition, and colors, and birds in all positions, natural and unnatural; the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's Waxworks was a pleasant sight in comparison to my collection, at least that was the impression ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... raged round them, but the soldiers stood firm enough. A continual cry of 'Harlot, harlot,' went up. Stones were scarce on the sward of the park, but a case bottle aimed at the woman alighted on the ear of one of the guards. It burst in a foam of red, and he fell beneath the belly of the mule with a dry grunt and the clang of iron. The soldiers put down ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... skin of my teeth. A few yards more the spinney ceased, and we were away out in the open country, plunging and galloping as if our very souls depended on it. From all sides queer and fantastic shadows of objects, which certainly had no material counterparts in the moon-kissed sward of the rich, ripe meadows, rose to greet us, and filled the lane with their black-and-white wavering, ethereal forms. The evening was one of wonders for which I had no name—wonders associated with an iciness that was far from ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... said the Author sitting up among the Rugs. "Just as you came in I was writing about the Fays and the Elfins. I was in the deep Greenwood, the velvet Sward kissing my wan Cheek ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of woodland. Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream, now tamed and educated, passed from one to another marble basin, in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... down Rotten Row as Holroyd said this, with the dull leaden surface of the Serpentine on their right, and away to the left, across the tan and the grey sward, the Cavalry Barracks, with their long narrow rows of gleaming windows. Up the long convex surface of the Row a faint white mist was crawling, and a solitary, spectral-looking horseman was cantering noiselessly out of it towards them. The evening had almost begun; the sky had changed ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... in the sweet spring weather, while Roderick was on the stand at Epsom, watching the City and Suburban winner pursue his meteor course along the close-cropped sward, Lord Mallow was sitting at ease in a flowery fauteuil in the Queen Anne morning-room at Kensington, sipping orange-scented tea out of eggshell porcelain, and listening to Lady Mabel's dulcet accents, as she ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... snows Are sparkling to the moon: My breath to heaven like vapour goes: May my soul follow soon! The shadows of the convent-towers Slant down the snowy sward, Still creeping with the creeping hours That lead me to my Lord: Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies, Or this first snowdrop of the year That in ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... where the soil is thin and the ground high or sloping, nor to scrape mould on such ground, but only to cut truck and take earth from places where the soil is deep, or where, from being in a hollow, it will speedily again accumulate and sward over; and, in cutting peats, tenants shall on all occasions open the banks in a straight line, and in the line of the watercourse, and make proper drains from the lower end of the banks, in order to prevent the accumulation ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... reading-place under the trees. It was the same spot where they had sat when Barker first brought him to see her. Margaret had no particular feeling about the little nook under the trees. It was merely the most convenient place to sit and work; that was all. But to Claudius the circle of green sward represented the temple of his soul, and Margaret was to him Rune Wife and prophetess as well as divinity. In such places, and of such women, his fair-haired forefathers, bare-armed and sword-girt, had asked counsel in trouble, and ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... which my memory must presently recall. Often do I now compare those splendid scenes with memories of my soul thus expending itself on nature; again I walk that valley with my sovereign, whose white robe brushed the coppice and floated on the green sward, whose spirit rose, like a promised fruit, from each calyx filled ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... Berwick. Spacious and comfortable-looking homes stood on either side of it, each in its setting of lawn and shade trees. Most of these showed no dividing fences or hedges, and boundaries were indiscernible in the green velvety sward that swept in a ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... [76] the American War of 1812-14, where a few of these veterans had clanked their sabres and sported their epaulettes, &c. With the exception of an esteemed and aged Quebec merchant, Long John Fraser, all now sleep the long sleep, under the green sward and leafy shades of Mount Hermon or Belmont cemeteries, or in the moist ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... level space of sward between us and the slough. With the courtesy derived from London, and the processions I had seen, to this place I led him. And that he might breathe himself, and have every fibre cool, and every muscle ready, my hold upon his coat I loosed, and left him to begin with me, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... couple made their appearance. Sally's foot had caught in her riding-skirt as she ran, throwing her at full length on the sward, and Mark, in picking her up, had possessed himself of the whip. She was not hurt in the least, (her life having been a succession of tears and tumbles,) but Mark's arm found it necessary to encircle her waist, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... discovered. Then, at the first volley, Walpole fell, with several of those immediately about Ms person; out from the shrubbery rushed the pikemen, clearing ditch and dike at a bound; dragoons and fencibles went down like the sward before the scythe of the mower; the three guns were captured, and turned on the flying survivors; the regimental flags taken, with all the other spoils pertaining to such a retreat. It was, in truth, an immense victory for a mob of peasants, marshalled by men who that day ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... wandered a path close to the water's edge—so close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right, rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance, side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome puff of wind. Elsewhere, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... faint but unmistakable, reached her ears. Turning, she passed noiselessly up the green sward, on the further side of the yew hedge; but paused, in surprise, as she drew level with the beech; for the old lay-sister's voice penetrated the hedge, and the first words she overheard seemed to the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... man of six stopped, his feet planted wide on the sward, his freckled face grave and ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... bushy top; mulleins, yellow and white; the wild mignonnette, and the white convolvulus; and clematis festooning the bushes, recalled the flowery fields and lanes of England, and yet told us that we were not there. The meadows had also their moist emerald sward scattered with the grass of Parnassus, and an autumnal crocus of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... so giddy as was I) have I swung in highly-coloured car, worked by a man with a rope. I have trod in stately measure the floor of Kensington's Town Hall (the tickets were a guinea each, and included refreshments—when you could get to them through the crowd), and on the green sward of the forest that borders eastern Anglia by the oft-sung town of Epping I have performed quaint ceremonies in a ring; I have mingled with the teeming hordes of Drury Lane on Boxing Night, and, during the run of a high-class ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... the shirt-sleeve had been torn away that caught her attention first—a bare arm with a spatter of blood on it. It lay extended along the grass just beside the driveway. She was obliged to take a step or two toward it before seeing that it was Claude's arm, and that he himself was lying on the sward of the lawn, with a little trickle of ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... all. And it was not a new undertaking temporarily delayed. There was moss creeping over the thick stone wall, she discovered when she walked over it. Whoever had laid that foundation had done it many a moon before. Yet the sward about was kept as if a gardener had it ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... chiefs could hardly realize that in that single second their boldest champion was overthrown; but when they saw him stretched motionless on the grassy sward, from out their ranks six warriors advanced to where the chieftain lay, and sadly they bore him away upon their battle-shields, and Enda remained ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... a woman lay. She screamed piercingly at intervals. Frank learned that she was in travail. By and by a doctor came, a nurse. They were putting up tents on the green sward. Automobiles rolled up, sounding their siren alarms. Out of them were carried bandaged men who moaned, silent forms on litters, more screaming women. They were taken to the tents. Extra police appeared to control the crowds that surged hither ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... harrowed to pulverize the soil and secure a comparatively level surface. Do not be satisfied with one harrowing. Go over it again and again until not a lump or clod remains in it. The finer the soil is before seed is sown the better will be the sward you grow ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... if, instead of amputating the head, the brain be crushed in its place by a sudden blow of a hammer, the heart ceases its motion at once. And such seemed to be the principle illustrated here. But why the agonized dancing on the sward of the inferior part of the reptile?—why its after painful writhing and wriggling? The young eel scooped from the stream, whose motions it resembled, is impressed by terror, and can feel pain; was it also impressed by terror, or susceptible of suffering? We see in the case of both exactly the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... the monk, it struck The Trold to the verdant sward: "Now shame befall thee, shaven Monk, The blows of ...
— The Serpent Knight - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... journeys down the western sky, Along the green sward, marked with Roman mound, Beneath the blithesome shepherd's watchful eye, The cheerful ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... the woods, Wulf, and be none the worse for it. For myself, I would rather lie on the sward with a blazing fire and the greenwood overhead, than sleep on the cold stones in a monk's kitchen, especially if it happened to be a fast-day and one had gone to rest ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... their will masses of the wild convolvulus, or "great bindweed," whose white blossoms, while they lasted, added much to the general effect of the bouquet Nellie was making up with her busy fingers from the spoils of coppice and sward. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... of art; one could believe that the scene had been wrought by some winged artist divine enough to mould mountains yet possessed by an ecstasy of human, grief. There was a little island on the loch, a knoll of sward so thickly set with tall swaying firs that from this distance it looked like a bunch of draggled crow's feathers set in the water, and from this there ran to the northern shore a broad stone causeway, so useless that it provoked the imagination and made the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... moved quickly along the edge of the forest until well beyond sight or sound of the city, then he turned across the crimson sward toward the shore of ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... pleasant short sward of darkest green, on one side overhung by the gray castle walls, and on the other by the forest trees that here and there closely approached it, when precisely as they turned the angle of the Bell Tower, they were encountered by a person walking ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... watched suspiciously the figure moving under the elm arches. Beneath the far reaching branches of a patriarchal cedar, a small herd of Jersey calves had grouped themselves, as if posing for Landseer or Rosa Bonheur; and one pretty fawn-colored weanling ran across the sward to meet the stranger, bleating a welcome and looking up, with unmistakable curiosity in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... does not choose with care one's means of exit. One departs by the egress most convenient to one. As I plunged through the opening I remembered that a considerable distance intervened between the window I had chosen and the sward below. Even as I bounded forth into space I thought of this. But when one is in mid-air one does not turn back; a law of physics involving the relation of solid bodies to the attraction of gravitation prevents. Nor did I indeed desire to ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... the varied rural environs of the great and gay royal city of England, the carriage, by her direction, took its course towards Primrose Hill, then crowned by a grove of "fair elm- trees," and clothed with a vesture of green sward, enamelled with wild flowers. Thence the light vehicle threaded a maze of shady lanes and pleasant field-paths, into a rustic, newly-made road, leading a little to the north of Covent Garden. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... combatants to desist; but ere the party could reach them, Hereward's opportunity had come. Ironhook, after a fruitless lunge, stumbled forward. Hereward leapt aside, and spying an unguarded spot below the corslet, drove his sword deep into the giant's body, and rolled him over upon the sward. Then ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... privilege of being run over by the engine?) In strolling over the South Downs, too, I was delighted to find that where the hill was steepest some benefactor of the order of walkers had made notches in the sward, so that the foot could bite the better and firmer; the path became a kind of stairway, which I have no ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... they walked towards the mill and were lost to sight behind it. Some minutes passed, and between the screaming of the saws the sound of a motor engine became audible. After a further delay a Ford car came out from behind the shed and moved slowly over the uneven sward towards the lane. In the car were Mr. and Miss ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... abandonment with which all this was uttered, none can conceive who have not heard the lamentations of the Irish peasantry. It brought tears to my eyes. I saw that no consolation of mine could soothe her grief, so I turned and departed; but as I rapidly traversed the level sward which separated me from my companions, now considerably in advance, I could still hear the wailings ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... against the sun, and flash like silver fountains in the assault of the wind. In this young wood of Taahauku all these hues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. The trees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and there interspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut for storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the Casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever before ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fingers from a half-clenched hand. Mighty oaks stand to the ankles in a fine tracery of underwood; thence the tall shaft climbs upwards, and the great forest of stalwart boughs spreads out into the golden evening sky, where the rooks are flying and calling. On the sward of the Bois d'Hyver the firs stand well asunder with outspread arms, like fencers saluting; and the air smells of resin all around, and the sound of the axe is rarely still. But strangest of all, and in appearance oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the shafts of a dung-cart was gnawing at a bunch of oleanders. The wheels, in grazing the flower borders, had bruised the box trees, broken a rhododendron, knocked down the dahlias; and clods of black muck, like molehills, embossed the green sward. Gouy was vigorously digging ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... case the somewhat illogical character of their view of crime, law, and personal responsibility would find a bright and elfish explanation; perhaps if I had lingered in the glade till moonrise I might have seen rings of tiny policemen dancing on the sward; or running about with glow-worm belts, arresting grasshoppers for damaging blades of grass. But taking the bolder hypothesis, that they really were policemen, I find myself in a certain difficulty. I was ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... boy—lying with his face to the sky. His hands were clutching the sward on either side and his finger nails were stuffed with earth and bits of grass that he had gathered in his despairing grasp upon life. His musket was gone; he was hatless and his face and clothing were begrimed. Around his neck hung a gold chain and locket. The priest, bending over him, unclasped ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... up numbers of minute grey shells, empty and dry, that crunched under foot like hoar-frost or fragile beads. They were very pretty; it was a shame to crush them—such vases as no king's pottery could make. They lay by millions in the depths of the sward, and I thought as I broke them unwillingly that each of these had once been a house of life. A living creature dwelt in each and felt the joy of existence, and was to itself all in all—as if the great sun over the hill shone ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... sat, dry-eyed, on the short grass of the hill side, with her thick legs stretched out, and her old feet turned up in their black cloth shoes. Her clogs stood near by, and further off the umbrella lay on the withered sward like a weapon dropped from the grasp of a vanquished warrior. The Marquis of Chavanes, on horseback, one gloved hand on thigh, looked down at her as she got up laboriously, with groans. On the narrow track of the seaweed-carts ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... strong tower in English hands Has been this many a year, Rising above its subject-lands And held in hate and fear. That rosy gleam upon the sward Is not the sun's last kiss; It is the blood of an English lord ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... cloisters where the black-letter chronicles were written in Latin, and music was scored and hymns were composed, and many a rare manuscript was illuminated in crimson and blue and emerald and gold; and we looked through the fair arches into the cloister-garth where in the green sward a grave lay ever ready to receive the remains of the next brother who should pass away from this little earth to the glory of Paradise. What struck W. V. perhaps most of all was, that in some leafy places these holy houses were so ancient that even the blackbirds and throstles had learned to ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... dressing-gowns, that never lifted its blessed arms ten rods from the spot where it was born; and only a few weeks ago lolling out of C.R.'s college-window at Oxford, counting the deer, as they nibbled the grass, and grouped themselves into beautiful pictures on the sward of ancient Magdalen! ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... It was a simple question, but it grated on the ear of Mr. Robert Beaufort—it struck discord at his heart. "Who were those boys?" as they ran across the sward, eager to welcome their father home; the westering sun shining full on their joyous faces—their young forms so lithe and so graceful—their merry laughter ringing in the still air. "Those boys," thought Mr. Robert Beaufort, "the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and overwrought, In summer time when skies are hot We seek its verdant, velvet sward, Oh may we hold in reverent thought The debt we owe, forgetting not The spirit passed to its reward Of one whose giant soul was fraught With true benignity—who sought To touch humanity's quick chord With fire from Heaven's ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... goat-herd, whose unsavoury charges are cropping the short grass that covers the site of the banqueting hall, where Norman knights and Italian barons once caroused in the crusading days of long ago. We seat ourselves on the dry sward in a sun-warmed angle of the ruins, where an almond tree that has sprouted from the rubble sends down from time to time upon our heads a tiny shower of pale pink blossoms at the bidding of the soft evening breeze. At our feet are masses of the dark shiny leaves of the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just come out on the roof of the palace. And now the round sun himself pops up from behind the waves of night. Where is the ghost? He is gone! Purple shadows of morn "slant o'er the snowy sward," the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and we confess we are very much relieved at the disappearance of the ghost. We don't like those dark scenes ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign upon it like an inn. "The Petrified Forest. Proprietor: C. Evans," ran the legend. Within, on a knoll of sward, was the house of the proprietor, and another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum, where photographs and petrifactions were retailed. It was a pure little isle of touristry ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... respectful in their manner towards him, offering to raise him a seat of turf at some little distance from their noisy comrades; but acknowledging their attention with kindness and courtesy, he refused it, and rousing himself with some difficulty from his desponding thoughts, threw himself on the sward beside his men, and joined ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... richest gifts—and the portico of it whereon Lancaster now stands, was marked as the most luxuriant and picturesque, and became the seat of an Indian village, at a period so early, that the "memory of man runneth not parallel thereto." On the green sward of the prairie was held many a rude gambol of the Indians; and here, too, was many an assemblage of the warriors of one of the most powerful tribes, taking counsel for a "war-path," upon ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... official dwelling occupied by the Gentleman-Pensioner consisted of perhaps a quarter of an acre of sward, fringed by a sorry row of leafless trees, and surrounded by a high wall, beyond the top of which shone the metal gables of half a score of straight-backed dwellings. 'Twas no uncommon thing for the parties ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... told to the lonely glacier, to the lurid storm-cloud, to the seething sea, but had never breathed in mortal ear—I told him the tragedy of my life. How well I remember the scene! We were resting beneath the chestnut-trees that shadow a stretch of level sward immediately below the last short stage of ascent that leads into the heart of the squalid village now nestling in the crevices of the old Moslem fastness. The midday hush was on sea and sky. Far out on the horizon a level line of smoke showed where an unseen steamer was crawling along under the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... flower which looked an autumn crocus, and which with other wild flowers fringed the whole course of the train. There was especially a small yellow flower, star-shaped, which we afterward learned was called Todos Santos, from its custom of blooming at All Saints, and which washed the sward in the childlike enthusiasm of buttercups. A fine white narcissus abounded, and clumps of a mauve flower which swung its tiny bells over the sward washed by the Todos Santos. There were other flowers, which did what they could to brighten our way, all clinging to the notion of summer, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... scene that lay before her—the small stretch of water ruffled with the wind, but showing a dash of blue sky here and there, the trees in the enclosure beyond clad in their summer foliage, the smooth green sward shining in the afternoon sunlight. Here, at least, was absolute quiet after the roar of London; and it was somewhat wistfully that she asked her husband how far this place was from her home, and whether, when he was at work, she could not come ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... was all that was wanting to set Martin's indignant heart into a blaze of inexpressible fury. Bob Croaker's visage instantly received a shower of sharp, stinging blows, that had the double effect of taking that youth by surprise and throwing him down upon the green sward. But Martin could not hope to do this a second time. Bob now knew the vigour of his assailant, and braced himself warily to the combat, commencing operations by giving Martin a tremendous blow on the point of his nose, and another on the chest. These had the effect of tempering ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... Regent. The principal entrance of this palace in Pall Mall, with its screen of columns, will be remembered by many. In the rear of the mansion was an extensive garden that reached from Warwick Street to Marlborough House; green sward, stately trees, (probably two hundred years old), and beds of the choicest flowers, gave to the grounds a picturesque attraction perhaps unequalled. It was here that the heir to the throne of England gave, in 1813, an open-air ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... thrown into one common grave. Among them I recognized the father of Alice, and gave him sepulture with my own hands. I selected a small headland which sloped gradually toward the sea; the green sward was shaded by a single thorn-tree, beneath whose shelter I placed the grave of the unfortunate stranger. When Alice had sufficiently recovered to walk to the spot, I led her thither, and pointed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... basswood trees, or running in dark, swift, silent currents under tangles of wild grapevines, and drooping alders, and haw trees. At one of these lovely spots the three vets sat down on the thick green sward to rest, "on Smith's account." The leaves of the trees were as fresh and green as in June, the jays called cheery greetings to them, and kingflshers darted to and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... staircase, that I would slip away and lose myself accidentally in the grounds, appearing only in time for the London train. This happy mode of issue from my difficulties lent a springiness to my step, as we followed a waxwork footman over the velvet sward to a nook under a group of copper beeches. But there, to my dismay, stood a charmingly appointed tea-table glittering with silver and Royal Worcester, with several liveried servants bringing cakes and muffins and berries to Lady Veratrum, who sat behind the steaming urn. I started ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... when it has strayed from the flock. The Redeemer's knowledge is infinite; He looks not only over the multitude generally, but into each individual. When I stand on a hillock at the edge of a broad meadow, and look across the sward, it may be said in a general way that I look on all the grass of that field; but the sun in the sky looks on it after another fashion,—shines on every down-spike that protrudes from every blade. It is thus that the Good Shepherd knows the flock. Knowing all, he misses any one that ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... alighted from his gig, and followed her. She led him to a cairn at a considerable distance from the road, where he found a lamb, completely wedged in betwixt two large stones, and struggling with its legs uppermost. He extricated the sufferer, and placed it on the green sward; and the mother poured forth her thanks in a long and continued bleat. (Capt. Brown's Pop. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... which spring like the sward in its native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not as if spread over a sandy embankment; answering ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... spring—the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... a marble monument now, poor mother!" thought the son, picking his way through the long, tangled grass of the dreary place. Not a tree, not a shrub in sight. Not even the sward kept carefully. The slate had fallen flat, or, more likely, had been thrown down, and no hand had cared to raise again a stone to the memory of a despised enemy, who had never been even seen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... ice and snow of February, the spring season opens in the Southern woods and pastures. The fragrant yellow jessamine clusters in golden bugles over shrubs and trees, and the sward is enameled with the white, yellow and blue violet. The crocus and cowslip, low anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land brightens with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys were clear, defined to the shadows of their verges, the distances sharply distinct, and with the colours of day but slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle-mark. The breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; crouched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started afresh. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... this might signify: we were to learn it soon enough, though, more's the pity! Soon after the two Lepels of Gnitze [Footnote: a peninsula in Usedom] came from the Damerow; and the noblemen saluted one another on the green sward close beside us, but without looking on us. And I heard the Lepels say that naught could yet be seen of his Majesty, but that the coast-guard fleet around Ruden was in motion, and that several hundred ships were sailing ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... was now in his decline, and the evening remarkably serene, when he entered a hollow part of the road, which winded between the surrounding banks, and seamed the sward in different lines, as the choice of travellers had directed them to tread it. It seemed to be little frequented now, for some of those had partly recovered their former verdure. The scene was such as induced Harley to stand and enjoy it; when, turning round, his notice ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... her, who, after a successful hearing before the Commerce Commission, had more than ever the alert air of a man who knows his own business. Outside in the summer sunlight, above the blue water of the Lake and over the dingy sward of the Park, the airmen were man[oe]uvring their winged ships, casting great shadows as they dipped and ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... '—and I'll do what I brag o'!' she added, throwing her stocking on the patch of green sward about the stone, and starting to her feet with a laugh. 'Is't to be uphill ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... opposite side, for a run to the verge of the projecting half-circle of rock that, like a gigantic bay-window or balcony in the mighty architecture of the hills, looked up and down the whole perspective of the valley. Jim Holden would readily have driven them round its very edge upon the flat, mossy sward, but for Mrs. Linceford's nerves, and the vague idea of almost an accident having occurred there lately which pervaded the little party. "Creggin's horses had backed," as Florrie Arnall said; and already the new comers had picked up, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... half-mile when he saw a car drawn up at the edge of the road, beside a shaded bit of turf. Several people had just descended from it; and were making preparations for an early picnic lunch. One of them had finished depositing a basket on the ground, at the side of the car farthest from the strip of sward where the others were spreading a sea-rug and setting an ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... the country near the river improved much, the channel of the river becoming very shallow; the water had spread over the flats for more than half a mile on either side, large flooded-gum trees growing abundantly with a fine sward of grass beneath, the soil being a rich brown clay loam. Gallinule and cockatoos were in large flocks feeding on the grass seeds, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... dark-eyed Creole voyageur, drew a deep sigh of delight as he resumed his seat on the grassy sward beside Galmiche. But he sprang again to his feet, for the tranquil morning air was suddenly disturbed by the reverberating boom ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... direction now in another, till I could not possibly have discovered my way again to the ocean. At length we drew up under a thick shaded bank, when the chief and most of his followers landed, stepping noiselessly over the soft green sward as they made their way through the forest. One man only was left in each canoe. I also remained, having now stronger fears than ever that my companions were bent on evil. Not a sound was heard except those I have before described proceeding from the forest. Suddenly I saw a bright light ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... excitement and heat. They were almost at her father's house, walking along the steaming asphalt of the quiet avenue. A few old trees had been allowed to remain on these blocks, and they drooped over the street, giving a pleasant shade to the broad houses and the little patches of sward. Just around the corner were some rickety wooden tenements, and a street so wretchedly paved that in the great holes where the blocks had rotted out stood pools of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... all the winter grapples Difficulties, thrust and ward— Needs to cheer him thro' his duty Memories of sun and beauty Orchards with the russet apples Lying scattered on the sward. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... at the summit of the little hill. It was a most delightful spot. A sward of short pliant grass carpeted a romantic little plain, skirted on one side by a portion of a forest, through which the sun cast short and interrupted glances of his parting splendour. Above the heads of the travellers, rose in dark grandeur the majestic form ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... got up and prepared for his interview with John Gordon. He walked up and down the sward of the Green Park, thinking to himself of the language which he would use. If he could only tell the man that he hated him while he surrendered to him the girl whom he loved so dearly, it would be well. For in truth there was nothing of Christian charity ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... Stanford went remarkably well with each other, and whistling all the way, he reached his destination in half an hour—a clear, silvery stream, shadowed by waving trees and famous in fishing annals. He flung himself down on the turfy sward, lit a cigar, and began smoking and staring reflectively ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... Cathvah; and behind him all the lawn was as it were sown thick with spears, and these so buried in the earth that two-thirds of their length was concealed and a third only projected slantwise from the green and glittering sward. When the man with all his force, fury, and venom had discharged his last shaft and seen it, too, shoot screaming beneath the aerial feet of the hero, he roared so terribly that the shores and waters ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... bespeak the services of another clergyman, who lived a distance of six or seven miles in the direction of Waterford. A ridge of the Comeraghs lay between us and his lonely dwelling. Along this ridge lay a winding bridle-road, skirted by patches of green sward, and occasionally crossed by a sparkling mountain rill. Above us, on the hill-side, was a considerable bog, where crowds of country people were collecting to their daily toil. A merry laugh or boisterous joke occasionally rang clear in the morning air. The mirth went heavily to our hearts. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... scene," said Leslie, his quick appreciation of the beautiful actively brought into play, as they landed safely on the sward at the end of the bridge. "See the dusky shadows creeping over the Highlands, yonder, and their still duskier shadows in the still water. See the orange and pink of the sunset sky, reaching half way to the zenith, and that quarter moon dividing the sunset colors ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... an' within a few hours o' its being put in execution. Do ye ken the dark copse aboon Houndwood, where there is a narrow and crooked opening through the tangled trees, but leading to a bit o' bonny green sward, where a thousand ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... platans guard The outlet, did I turn away The boat-head down a broad canal From the main river sluiced, where all The sloping of the moon-lit sward Was damask-work, and deep inlay Of braided blooms [5] unmown, which crept Adown to where the waters slept. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... beneath the shade of the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat their palms together, marking the time; while before them, in couples on the sward, my gang of navvies rotated in a clumsy waltz watched by a ring of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... can now shew. The rigidity of the leaves of its plants, and the absence of fleshy fruits and farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals; and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of brilliant colouring, its sward probably unenlivened by any of the smaller flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or the music of birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to a human visitant. But neither man nor any other animals were then in existence to look ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... youthful train, Who move in joy, and dance along the plain; In scatter'd groups, each favour'd haunt pursue, Repeat old pastimes, and discover new; Flush'd with his rays, beneath the noontide Sun, In rival bands, between the wickets run, 130 Drive o'er the sward the ball with active force, Or chase with nimble feet its rapid course. But these with slower steps direct their way, Where Brent's cool waves in limpid currents stray, While yonder few search out some green retreat, And arbours shade them from the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... yellow water-lilies and the rearing sword-blades of the coming cat-tail, a swamp blackbird, on his glossy black orange-tipped wings, flung us defiance with his long, keen, full, saucy note; and as we sat down under our buttonwood and spread upon the sward our pastoral meal, the veery-thrush—sadder and stranger than any nightingale—played for us, unseen, on an instrument like those old water-organs played on by the flow and ebb of the tide, a flute of silver in which some strange magician has somewhere hidden tears. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... green height and reclined on the cool sward in the shade of a beech tree. Here they could pick out the winding of the quick little river between its green banks far below, and look across the roofs of slumbrous Newbern. The Wilbur twin could almost pick out the Penniman house. Then he looked up, and low in the sky he surprisingly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the vernal sward Hallowed to freedom all the shore; In fragments fell the yoke abhorred— The footstep of a foreign lord Profaned ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... running across the sward and down the rocky path to the edge of the lake and clapped a hand on the shoulders of Herbert and Montmorency. He did not mean to be less cordial to Jim Barlow but he was. For two reasons: one that Dorothy ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... her almost superhuman beauty. To the youthful stranger's request she answered by putting her little white feet in such active motion, that they seemed to tread upon the air instead of the green sward. ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... with fearful superiority, sideling as he advanced. Already had he closed upon his victim, while with a springing effort a large and bony hand was extended to secure his shoulder in his grasp. The effort was fatal to him; for in reaching too far he lost his balance, and fell heavily upon the sward. A shout of exultation burst from the English troops, and numerous voices now encouraged the pursued to renew his exertions. The advice was not lost; and although only a few seconds had elapsed between the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... to the side of the babe and knelt upon the sward, her long robe of rose leaf color spreading about her like a gossamer cloud. Her lovely countenance expressed curiosity and surprise, but, most of all, a tender, womanly pity. The babe was newborn, chubby and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum

... once been a widow; again a widow you will be, and once more wedded, till the green turf on which you have been wont to trip so lightly lies heavy above your head. Think of that as you step forth over the green sward, when the air blows softly and the sun shines brightly—think what you will ere ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... bade him follow his own rede, and drave a peg down into the sward on the cliff, and heaped stones up ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... under the great wide-spreading trees are surrounded by family groups—old patriarchs, and their children, and great-grandchildren; the steaming urn of tea in the middle; the old people chatting and gossiping; the young people laughing merrily; the children tumbling about over the green sward. Passing on we come to a group of Mujiks lying camp-fashion on the grass, eating their black bread, drinking their vodka, and sleeping whenever they please—for this is their summer home, and this grass is their bed. Next we come to a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... Sir:—In reply to your inquiry relative to the use of Peruvian guano on Long Island, I would say, forming my opinion from experience and observation that the mode of tillage—the rotation of crops, and the way of applying guano—are about as follows: Commence with corn, which is usually on green sward, after being mowed and pastured from four to six years. First, plow in the spring as soon as the frost is out of the ground, which is generally about the 20th of March. Prepare the ground for planting the 1st of May, by harrowing well two ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... an attractive one to a man who had spent much of his time in the wilderness—a wide sweep of sunlit sward with the tennis nets stretched across part of it; on one side a dark fir wood; and for a background a stretch of brown moor receding into the distance, dimmed by an ethereal haze. A group of young men and women, picturesquely clad, were busy about the nets; others in flannels and ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... inclining the handle to the furrow side, at the same time making the heel act as a fulcrum to raise the point of the instrument. In turning up unbroken ground, it was first employed with the heel uppermost, with pushing strokes to cut the breadth of the sward to be turned over; after which, it was used horizontally as above described. We are indebted to a Parliamentary Blue Book for the following representation of this interesting relic of ancient agriculture. It is given in the appendix to the 'Ninth Report of the Commissioners ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... in another moment he was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broad lime-tree, amidst the antlers of deer that gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my host was called away to attend some visitors of importance, and I found myself on the sward before the house, right in view of the mausoleum and ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I can be more specific, for my recollection of it is positively photographic. I can see myself, a little creature in a straw hat, playing on what the nurses used to call "the libery lawn"— a beautiful stretch of sward, upon which the Great Parlour window opened. This lawn is half surrounded by an old red sandstone battlement wall, with a long, terrace-like mound in front of it. Suddenly, in the middle of our play, I saw the Great Parlour window open and my father, with his hand held to shelter ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... pool of water, half hidden by overhanging rocks and long masses of depending mosses, in the midst of a natural grotto of enchanting loveliness, and Oda Iseka signaled that their journey was at an end, Byrne laid Theriere gently upon the flower-starred sward, and with a little, choking gasp collapsed, unconscious, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... out, and the poor child had put flowers everywhere about the room; evidently it was a great day for her. At the sight of all this, the commandant could not help looking enviously at the little house and the green sward about it, and watched the peasant girl with an air that expressed both his doubts and his hopes. Then his eyes fell on Adrien, with whom La Fosseuse was deliberately busying herself, and ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... camp-fire, and on his left was the gorge, a hundred times more frightful in his eyes now than it had ever seemed before. In front of him the mountain sloped gently down to the valley below, its base clothed with a thick wood, which at that height looked like an unbroken mass of green sward, and beyond that, so far away that it could be but dimly seen, was a broad expanse of prairie, from which arose the whitewashed walls of his uncle's rancho. It was a view that would have put an artist into ecstasies, but the fugitive was in no mood to appreciate ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon

... in great and small, Then what of Him who made it all? In eyes and brain and heart and limb Let's see the wondrous work of Him. In house and hill and sward and sea, In bird and beast and flower and tree, In everything from sun to sod, The wonder and the awe ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... that we were nearing the cliff; for the Preventive men mark all the footpaths on the cliff with whitewashed stones, so that one can pick up the way without risk on a dark night. A few minutes more, and we reached a broad piece of open sward, which I knew for the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... dead upon the earth at their place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest, where they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual to find "at every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging suspended from the trees." Their country, laid waste with the sword, the axe, the fagot, "was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness." "These atrocities were enacted ... in no dark age, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... Well for him shall it be, if, like colts and calves, and all happy young things, he is permitted to breath the wholesome air of woods and fields, to drink from flowing streams, to lie in the shade of trees on the green sward, or to stand alone beneath the silent starlit heavens until the thought and feeling of the infinite and eternal sink deep into his soul, and make it impossible that he should ever look upon the universe ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... long familiar cry of "knuckle down," and at tip-cheese, or odd and even, his hand is out. But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this domestic oasis in the desert of Goswell Street—Pickwick who has choked up the well, and thrown ashes on the sward—Pickwick, who comes before you to-day with his heartless tomato sauce and warming-pans—Pickwick still rears his head with unblushing effrontery, and gazes without a sigh on the ruin he has made. Damages, gentlemen—heavy ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... gleamed here and there with flickerings of red and gilt, reflecting dimly a small but brisk wood fire which crackled in a carved stone fireplace. His feet slipped on the floor of polished tiles and wandered from silky rugs to lose themselves in great black bear skins as in unmown sward. He went from the portrait of a "cinquecento" cardinal to a splendid tryptich set over a Gothic chest, from a cabinet sheltering a collection of old glass to an Annunciation by an unknown Primitive. He told himself that this was ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington

... admit, discriminate between youth and young men, between the genial action of youthful qualities and the imperfections and perversions of youthful character. Youth we commonly represent under the image of morn,—clear, fresh, cheerful, radiant, the green sward trembling and gleaming with ecstasy as the rising sun transfigures its dew-drops into diamonds; but then morn is sometimes black with clouds, and foul with vapors, and terrible with tempests. In treating, therefore, of the position and influence of young men in history, let us begin with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... down which it was so exciting to run in the canoes under the skillful guidance of the cautious, experienced Indians. The great granite rocks in picturesque beauty were everywhere to be seen. Back of the sandy beach and grassy sward, where stood the tents and camp fires, was the deep, dark, unbroken forest, that stretched away and away for hundreds ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... were flying at full speed, dodging through gaps in the branches and between close-set trunks, with leaves and twigs slashing them from every side. They burst out of the wood and sped over a meadow. David saw below them a huge Faun-like figure pacing majestically across the sward. A flaming wreath encircled its brow, garlands of flowers hung from its arms and shoulders, and those enchanted pipes were lifted to its lips. Around the cloven hooves, and trailing out behind, danced a multitude of creatures—lambs and kids gamboling, goats and rams tossing their horns, ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... of the pool was a spacious sweeping curve of the sward, dotted with clumps of blue flag-flowers. From the green fringes of this shore the bottom sloped away softly over a sand so deep and glowing in its hue of orange-yellow as to give the pool the rich name by which it was ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... simple lawn of fine grass with a vast central basin surmounted by a figure of Venus, nude and white; and antique fragments, vases, statues, columns, and sarcophagi were ranged symmetrically all around the deserted, sunlit yet melancholy, sward. On returning on one occasion to the Pincio Pierre spent a delightful morning there, penetrated by the charm of this little nook with its scanty evergreens, and its admirable vista of all Rome and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola



Words linked to "Sward" :   soil, sod, ground, land, greensward, turf, divot



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