You will go on enjoying your mighty theories and dreams till suddenly the juice of that 'little western flower' drips on your eyelids, and then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you caress 'the fair large ears' of some donkey, and hang rapturously upon its bray, till you perhaps discover that he has pretended, on your account solely, to like roses, when he has a natural proclivity to thistles; and then, pitiable child!

So the poor donkey had to feed on thistles.

Mingled with these grow, lower, the spiraeas, white and pink, yellow touch-me-not, fresh white arrowhead, bright blue vervain and skullcap, dull snakehead, gay monkey-flower, coarse eupatoriums, milk-weeds, golden-rods, asters, thistles, and a host beside.

I passed it to-day and looked over the hedge and saw the chickweed and the thistles in undisputed possession.

" "for, a neglected field Shall for the fire its thorns and thistles yield.

All thistles and weeds by the sides of the roads and ditches, are ruthlessly cut down.

On the far bank is a small patch of Sal forest jungle, with a thick rank undergrowth of ferns, thistles, and rank grass.

The rock had some grass and many thistles; both cows and sheep were grazing.

The dandelion, the buttercup, duckweed, celandine, mullein, burdock, yarrow, whiteweed, nightshade, and most of the thistles,these are importations.

...But was it not the practice of the times, for other makers, like the bees tolling from every flower the virtuous sweets, to gather from the thistles of the law the sweetest honey?

And I will play at being a goddess, as I used to play at being a ghost, and I will run to meet you from the west, and the high grasses and the ferns shall whip my knees, and the thistles shall bow to me, and the sea shall be very calm and say no word, and there shall be no ship in sight.

No passing but the peaceful passing of the lambs disturbed the thistles and the foxgloves.

Above was an equestrian statue in a niche, and a great painted window with traceries of hearts and thistles.

They entered the larger door, and that afternoon twelve heralds, in bright red tabards that were embroidered with golden thistles, rode out of this door, to proclaim the fulfilment of the prophecy as to the Zhar-Ptitza's feather, and that afternoon the priests of the Peohtes gave thanks in all their curious underground temples.

Nothing you could put on me would be any hardship at all, if it was to walk steel thistles.

A FEW FIGS FROM THISTLES, poems and sonnets, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Inside the copse stand innumerable thistles shoulder high, dead and gaunt; and a grey border running round the field at the bottom of the hedge shows where the tall, strong weeds of summer have withered up.

Efforts have been made to extend the area available for feeding by grubbing hedges and cultivating pieces of ground hitherto given over to thistles, rushes, and rough grasses.

The cross-bow makers used to exercise themselves in shooting at the popinjay, or artificial parrot, in a field called Tassal Close in London, from the number of thistles growing there, now called the Old Artillery Ground.

If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain: If I have eaten the Fruits thereof without mony, or have caused the owners thereof to lose their Life; Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley.

The rank soil of riches we are accustomed to see overrun with seeds and thistles; but who could expect that the kindest seeds sown on poverty and dire misfortunes should meet with nothing but a rock at bottom?

An energetic tourist would have gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains of summer.

The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in consequence of tasting "the fruit of that forbidden tree" was, to my mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the awakening of the sense of shame.

But I confine myself to this Introduction, as his last work, where endeavouring at rhetorical flowers, he gives us only bunches of thistles; of which I could present the reader with a plentiful crop; but I refer him to every page and line of the pamphlet itself.

I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me; What the Eternal says, I stammering say again. Give me what you will; I eat thistles as roses, And according to my food I grow and I give.