turf quotes

Oh, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all! The heaped-up sods upon the fire, The pile of turf against the wall! To have a clock with weights and chains And pendulum swinging up and down, A dresser filled with shining delph, Speckled and white and blue and brown!

- Padraic Colum
c.1907  'An Old Woman of the Roads'.

The blue ribbon of the turf.

- Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
  Of the Derby race. Life of Lord George Bentinck, ch.26.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours'march to dinnerand then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.

-William Hazlitt
  Table Talk, vol.2,'On Going a  Journey'.

Ye valleys low where the mild whispers use, Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes, That on the green turf such the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.

-John Milton
  Lycidas, l.136^41.

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of water's murmuring Along a shelving bankof turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightst in dream.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  'The Question', stanza1.