United States or Ghana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But in the great famines, as in India and Russia, God allows millions to die of starvation. These His children pray to Him for bread. He leaves them to die. Is it not so? God made the sunshine, sweet children, gracious women; green hills, blue seas; music, laughter, love, humour; the palm tree, the hawthorn buds, the "sweet-briar wind"; the nightingale and the rose.
More than that she was a stranger, Fleda was sure; and dreading his return, or that somebody else might come and find her with the tokens of tears upon her face, she stepped out upon the greensward, and made for the flaunting sweet-briar that seemed to beckon her to visit its relations.
O day of God's grace! and followed her till she stopped and knocked at the door of a house, when there came out a Nazarene, to whom she gave a dinar, and he gave her in return an olive-green bottle, full of wine, which she put into the basket, saying to the porter, 'Hoist up and follow me. Said he, 'By Allah, this is indeed a happy and fortunate day! And shouldering the basket, followed her till she came to a fruiterer's, where she bought Syrian apples and Turkish quinces and Arabian peaches and autumn cucumbers and Sultani oranges and citrons, beside jessamine of Aleppo and Damascus water-lilies and myrtle and basil and henna-blossoms and blood-red anemones and violets and sweet-briar and narcissus and camomile and pomegranate flowers, all of which she put into the porter's basket, saying, 'Hoist up! So he shouldered the basket and followed her, till she stopped at a butcher's shop and said to him, 'Cut me off ten pounds of meat. He gave her the meat, wrapped in a banana leaf, and she put it in the basket, saying, 'Hoist up, O porter! and went on to a grocer's, of whom she took pistachio kernels and shelled almonds and hazel-nuts and walnuts and sugar cane and parched peas and Mecca raisins and all else that pertains to dessert.
Also, instead of sweet-briar, there is now a very flourishing crop of sting-nettles. All this I could see, because the high door with the spikes, that used to part the Dial-court from this place of common business, was fallen forward from its upper hinge, and splayed out so that I could put my fist through.
She thought him fatigued with the exertion he had made, and allowed him to rest, while she contemplated with pleasure even the slight advances which he had already made in shaking off the traces of illness. The silence was not broken till Aunt Geoffrey came in, just as the last stroke of the Church-bell died away, bringing in her hand a fragrant spray of the budding sweet-briar.
SWEET-BRIAR. Is a very fragrant shrub, for which it has long been cultivated in the gardens. There are several varieties in the nurseries; as the Double-flowering, Evergreen, &c. which are much esteemed. RUBUS Idaeus. THE RASPBERRY. Produces a well known fruit in great esteem, and of considerable use both as food and for medicine. RUBUS fruticosus.
'Noble lords, he said, 'you have fallen upon evil days. May God receive your souls into His Paradise. As for me, among all the pains I suffer, the worst is that never shall I see my Emperor again. Under a pine, close to a sweet-briar, the corpse of Oliver was lying, and Roland raised him in his arms and bare him to the Archbishop, where he laid him on a shield, near to the other peers.
Then on through the tangle of sweet-briar, honeysuckle and wild roses, where birds nested in the perfumed foliage, until, the summit reached, surrounded by purple heather and golden gorse, he would look on the sea below, with Sark, like a "basking whale, burning in the sunset."
The snow-ball and the sweet-briar are in their old places, each side of the humble porch; the white blossoms have fallen from the scraggy branches of the snow-ball, this first week in June; the fresh pink buds are opening on the fragrant young shoots of the sweet-briar.
One bush, or cluster of bushes, often presenting the crimson plum, the yellow crab-apple, the blue luscious grape, festoons of matured wild hops, mingled with the red berries of the clambering sweet-briar, that bound them all lovingly together."
Word Of The Day