"Fen" Quotes from Famous Books
... frost covered the great fen on the north side of the city with ice, good Fitzstephen delighted to watch "the young men play upon the ice; some, striding as wide as they may, do slide swiftly; others make themselves seats of ice as great as millstones; ... — Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... a spy for the FBI—the Fantasy Bureau of Investigation! Learning of a monster meeting of science fiction "fen" in New York, I teleported myself 3,000 miles from the Pacificoast to check the facts on the monsters. And it was true—the 14th World ... — Out of This World Convention • Forrest James Ackerman
... eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light. As a fen-fire's beam On a sluggish stream Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there; And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, That shook in the wind ... — Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... all kinds of men; Gracing the mountain or hid in the fen; Never adorning the brow of the fair; Seldom deemed worthy some corner to share In the bouquets that are cast in the way Princely feet tread on reception's proud day; The glory of roses do not attain; Beautiful mosses, ye ... — Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... with Trelawny under his arm. At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o’clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, ... — Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... written by his chaplain, Asser. One or two further incidents of the Athelney period are from the later chroniclers—notably the sign given by St. Cuthberht—as are also the names of the herdsman and the nobles in hiding in the fen. ... — King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... of the Ely Fen District in 1815, which the 'Westminster Gazette' calls 'a powerful drama of human passion'; and the 'National Observer' 'a story worthy ... — The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... entire world to itself on earth, a different world which has its own life, its settled inhabitants and its passing travelers, its voices, its noises, and above all its mystery. Nothing is more disturbing, nothing, more disquieting, more terrifying occasionally, than a fen. Why should this terror hang over these low plains covered with water? Is it the vague rustling of the rushes, the strange Will-o'-the-wisps, the profound silence which envelops them on calm nights, ... — The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Master Pearson? Do you think you could arouse the people in the fen-country? You might raise and drill an army in those wilds without the Government knowing any thing about ... — John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... yet not sweet enough, I'll bid a gentler, subtler strain awake, And sing of fights with Jackson on the Gulf And Perry's hard-fought battle on the Lake! Of fights in fen and moor and hoary brake, On Lookout Mountain and the rolling main— Through searing blasts of bleak December's flake, And drenching torrents of fair April's rain: Their valiant deeds are springing ever ... — The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... bog, and fen, and boulder, I must bear it on my shoulder, Beaten of wind, torn of briar, Smitten of rain, parched ... — Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... have within these few years found it practicable to make the geese travel on foot too, as well as the turkeys, and a prodigious number are brought up to London in droves from the farthest parts of Norfolk; even from the fen country about Lynn, Downham, Wisbech, and the Washes; as also from all the east side of Norfolk and Suffolk, of whom it is very frequent now to meet droves with a thousand, sometimes two thousand in a drove. They begin to drive them generally in August, by which time the harvest is almost over, ... — Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... such large-acred men, 240 Lords of fat Ev'sham, or of Lincoln fen, Buy every stick of wood that lends them heat, Buy every pullet they afford to eat. Yet these are wights who fondly call their own Half that the devil o'erlooks from Lincoln town. The laws of God, as well as of the land, Abhor a perpetuity should stand: Estates have wings, ... — The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... "Moor and fen." While these words seem new and unusual to us, we must remember that in England they are as common as the terms marsh and swamp are ... — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... refer to the action of beavers and of fallen trees in producing bogs, [Footnote: The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem well settled. We have bog, swamp, marsh, morass, moor, fen, turf-moss, peat-moss, quagmire, all of which, though sometimes more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably, or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In Sweden, where, ... — The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... all brother-men, in the weird of the fen, With God's creatures I bide, 'mid the birds that I ken; Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea Brings a message of peace from ... — The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... name. A Winkelried it was, Who slew the dragon in the fen at Weiler, And lost his ... — Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... or two ago I found myself beside the lower waters of the Cam, in flat pastures, full of ancient thorn-trees just bursting into bloom. I gained the towing-path, which led me out gradually into the heart of the fen; the river ran, or rather moved, a sapphire streak, between its high green flood-banks; the wide spaces between the embanked path and the stream were full of juicy herbage, great tracts of white cow-parsley, with here and there a reed-bed. I stood long to listen to the sharp song of the ... — The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which nursed in Tiber's fen, Did all the world with hideous shape affray; That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping den, And trod down all the rest to dust and clay: His battering horns pull'd out by civil hands, And iron teeth lie scatter'd on the sands; Backed, bridled by a monk, ... — Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... or Fen Stanton, not Stratford, must be here meant, as the former is in the direct road ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... of the swain drowned in a fen, and the grief of his widow, possessing every charm which simplicity and tenderness can bestow, and give to that Ode claims to admiration which, if admitted, have ... — The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... justice when Henry came to the throne. The wretched freeholders summoned to the Shire Court from farm and cattle, from mill or anvil or carpenter's bench, knew well the terrors of the journey through marsh and fen and forest, the dangers of flood and torrent, and perhaps of outlawed thief or murderer, the privations and hardships of the way; and the heavy fines which occur in the king's rolls for non-attendance show how anxiously great numbers of the suitors avoided joining in the troublesome and thankless ... — Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... beneath his wing. No beast nor bird is abroad, but the owl and the howling fox. She on a leafless tree; he in a cloud on the hill. Dark, panting, trembling, sad, the traveller has lost his way. Through shrubs, through thorns he goes, along the gurgling mill. He fears the rock and the fen. He fears the ghost of night. The old tree groans to the blast; the falling branch resounds. The wind drives the weathered burs, clung together, along the grass. It is the light tread of a ghost! He trembles amidst the night. Dark, dusky, howling ... — The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... middle of the night, Waking, she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light; From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her. Without hope of change, In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, "The day is dreary He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, weary, I ... — The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... purged my love. What strong compulsion drew Me on I knew not, till I saw in you The treasure I had blindly sought in vain. I praise Him, who our love has lifted thus To noble rank by sorrow,—licensed us To a triumphal progress, bade us sweep Thro' fen and forest to our castle-keep, A ... — Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... foreign retinue that Alfred had brought with him, as if to owe his throne to Norman swords, rather than to English hearts. Hardicanute, who succeeded Harold, whose memory he abhorred, whose corpse he disinterred and flung into a fen [103], had been chosen by the unanimous council both of English and Danish thegns; and despite Hardicanute's first vehement accusations of Godwin, the Earl still remained throughout that reign as powerful as in the two preceding it. When Hardicanute dropped down dead at a marriage ... — Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ganglion of connected tells usually has a number of small subsidiary tells round about it, the sites of small isolated buildings or villages connected with the central settlement. Originally the settlements were built upon natural rises of the ground which stood up as islands in the fen-country. ... — How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... days, comrades. The last time I followed the old chief, of honored memory, we held our war-council standing knee-deep in a fen. We had neither eaten nor drunk for two days, and three days' blood ... — The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Thine eyes with tears,—that thou hast not resign'd The passionate fire and freshness of thy youth: For as the current of thy life shall flow, Gilded by shine of sun or shadow-stain'd, Through flow'ry valley or unwholesome fen, Thrice blessed in thy joy, or in thy woe Thrice cursed of thy race,—thou art ordain'd To share beyond the lot of ... — The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... perish, of obesity, stupor or other malady, as yet: a stern Ruler and Line of Rulers therefore is called in,—a stern but most beneficent perpetual House-Surgeon is by Nature herself called in, and even the appropriate fees are provided for him! Dryasdust talks lamentably about Hereward and the Fen Counties; fate of Earl Waltheof; Yorkshire and the North reduced to ashes: all which is undoubtedly lamentable. But even Dryasdust apprises me of one fact: 'A child, in this William's reign, might have carried a purse of gold from end to end of England.' My erudite friend, it is a fact which outweighs ... — Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... formidable work were in many respects a remarkable class. The "railway navvies," as they are called, were men drawn by the attraction of good wages from all parts of the kingdom; and they were ready for any sort of hard work. Some of the best came from the fen districts of Lincoln and Cambridge, where they had been trained to execute works of excavation and embankment. These old practitioners formed a nucleus of skilled manipulation and aptitude, which rendered them of indispensable ... — Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... with eager delight the beauties of Virgil have been culling and drying his phrases for future use."—"I fear my good genius, who was wont to visit me with nightly visions in woods and brakes and by the river's marge, is now dying of a fen ague, and I shall thus probably emerge from my retreat not a hair-brained son of imagination, but a sedate black-lettered book worm, with a ... — The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Winkelried it was Who slew the dragoon in the fen at Weiler, And lost his life in ... — The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of the straw at the edge of the stack, to breathe a little fresh air, she saw the farmer with his men enter the yard, and heard him tell the people that he would have the stack taken into the barn and thrashed, and desired them to bid Fen, the ratcatcher, come, and bring all his dogs ... — Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... Among the boggy wilds of Ireland, blest By Cromwell, when his Puritanic jest Left Hell and Connaught open on their way. As I have heard so may the stranger hear! That he who drove the natives from the lawn, Must wander o'er the marsh and foggy fen Until the Irish gather with a cheer In Dublin of the Parliaments at dawn. God rest the ghost of Cromwell's ... — The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Susiskanes, warrior wild, And Pegastagon, Egypt's child: Thee, brave Arsames! from afar Did holy Memphis launch to war; And Ariomardus, high in fame, From Thebes the immemorial came, And oarsmen skilled from Nilus' fen, A countless crowd of warlike men: And next, the dainty Lydians went— Soft rulers of a continent— Mitragathes and Arcteus bold In twin command their ranks controlled, And Sardis town, that teems with gold, Sent forth its squadrons to the war— Horse upon horse, and car on car, Double and ... — Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... scarps and counterscarps, remarkably suggests the deliberate and calculated creation of man. It stands upon a little solitary hill at the head of Taw Marsh, and wins its name from the East Okement River which runs through the valley on its western flank. Above wide fen and marsh it rises, yet seen from Steeperton's vaster altitude, Oke Tor looks no greater than some fantastic child-castle built by a Brobding-nagian baby with granite bricks. Below it on this July day the waste of bog-land was puckered with brown tracts of naked soil, and seamed ... — Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... fen country of Lincolnshire, there lived, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, a wealthy Saxon franklin named Leofric, Lord of Bourn. He was related to the great Earls of Mercia, and his brother Brand was Abbot of Peterborough, ... — Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and worse they shall be, and the lords swear that ere a year be over ox and horse shall go free in Essex, and man and woman shall draw the team and the plough; and north away in the east countries dwell men in poor halls of wattled reeds and mud, and the north-east wind from off the fen whistles through them; and poor they be to the letter; and there him whom the lord spareth, the bailiff squeezeth, and him whom the bailiff forgetteth, the Easterling Chapman sheareth; yet be these stout men and valiant, and ... — A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... round the filthy fen A great arc 'twixt the dry bank and the swamp, With eyes turned unto those who ... — Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... You've no conception what an ugly place Plaistow is. The land isn't actual fen now, but it was once. And it's quite flat. And there is a great dike, twenty feet wide, oozing through it just oozing, you know; and lots of little dikes, at right angles with the big one. And the fields are all square. And there are ... — The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... in which he hopes to feast his liegemen and to give them presents. The joy of king and retainers is, however, of short duration. Grendel, the monster, is seized with hateful jealousy. He cannot brook the sounds of joyance that reach him down in his fen-dwelling near the hall. Oft and anon he goes to the joyous building, bent on direful mischief. Thane after thane is ruthlessly carried off and devoured, while no one is found strong enough and bold enough to cope with the monster. For ... — Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... replied, "that sit in a mead (by which your ship must needs pass) circled with dead men's bones. These are the bones of men whom they have slain, after with fawning invitements they have enticed them into their fen. Yet such is the celestial harmony of their voice accompanying the persuasive magic of their words, that, knowing this, you shall not be able to withstand their enticements. Therefore, when you are to sail by them, you shall stop ... — THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... Kamboja River. Frenchmen, riding long like. French mission and missionaries in China. Frere charnel. Frere, Sir B. Froissart. Fu-chau (Fo-kien, Fuju), paper-money at; wild hill people of; its identity; language of; tooth relique at. Fuen (Fen) ho River. Funeral rites, Chinese, in Tangut; of the Kaans; at Kinsay. (See also Dead.). Fungul, city of. Furs, of the Northern Regions. Fusang, Mexico ... — The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... disgusting short pipes; and when we established the Coverley Club in Trinity, they set up an opposition, and called themselves the Navvies. And they used to make piratical expeditions down to Lynn in eight oars, to attack bargemen, and fen girls, and shoot ducks, and sleep under turf-stacks, and come home when they had drank all the public-house taps dry. I remember ... — Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... big brown jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco, "I'll tell it to you if you like: you are going to live in the house, and you may as well know it. I am sure, Captain Niel, that it will go no further. You see I was born in England, yes, and well-born too. I come from Cambridgeshire—from the fat fen-land down round Ely. My father was a clergyman. Well, he wasn't rich, and when I was twenty he gave me his blessing, thirty sovereigns in my pocket, and my passage to the Cape; and I shook his hand, God ... — Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... blood as theirs for the shedding, In the veins of Cavaliers was its heading. You have no such stately men In your abolition den, To march through foe and fen, nothing dreading. ... — War Poetry of the South • Various
... black woman Mawezhah, adv. anciently, long ago Metegwob, n. a bow Moskin, n. full Mahdwawa, n. a sound Menoodahchin, adv. enough Menekaun, n. seed Menequang, v. to drink Mahskoosen, n. a marsh, a bog, a fen Mamangwah, n. a butterfly Mahskeeg, n. a swamp Mahmahjenoowin, n. miracle Mahnahtaneseweneneh, n. a shepherd Mahskahwezewin, strength Mahjetong, v. to begin Mahkuk, n. a pail, or box Mahkahkoosug, n. a barrel Megahzooweneneh, n. ... — Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... 'twas borne on me that land had lived of old, And men had crept and slain and slept where now they toiled for gold; Through jungles dim the mammoth grim had sought the oozy fen, And on his track, all bent of back, had crawled ... — Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Romans he and I have been preparing for what had best be done in case of defeat. To return to your homes would be but to court death, and if we are to die at the hands of the Romans it is best that we should die fighting them to the end. We have therefore arranged that we will seek a refuge in the Fen country that forms the western boundary of the land of the Iceni; there we can find strongholds into which the Romans can never force their way; thence we can sally out, and in turn take vengeance. There will rally round you hundreds of other brave men till we grow to a force that may again ... — Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Swamp he speeds— His path was rugged and sore; Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, Through many a fen where the serpent feeds, ... — Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... sack-and-sugar under belt, Then was his face set homeward this same hour, Why lingers he? Ill news, 't is said, flies fast, And good news creeps; then his must needs be good That lets the tortoise pass him on the road. Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fen And haunted hollow! Look not where in chains On Hounslow heath the malefactor hangs, A lasting terror! Give thy roan jade spur, And spare her not! All Devon waits for thee, Thou, for the moment, most important man! A sevennight ... — Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... moss-grown gravestones stood grim and ghostly in the white light, and out across the meadows down to where the waters of the Nene, rippling on, were touched with silver. The river-path was wide, running by the winding bank away to the fen-lands and beyond. As I gained the river's edge and walked beneath the willows I heard now and then a sharp, swift rustling in the sedges as some water-rat or otter, disturbed by my presence, slipped away into hiding. ... — The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... mutineers were hastening across the country which lies between Cambridge and the Wash. Their road lay through a vast and desolate fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and overhung during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist, high above which rose, visible many miles, the magnificent tower of Ely. In that dreary region, covered by vast flights of wild fowl, ... — The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had seen Caernarvon's towers, And well he knew the spire of Sarum; And he had been where Lincoln bell Flings o'er the fen that ponderous knell— A ... — The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... thin), which enables them to make their way through dense herbage with facility. I can't find anything clear about its country, except that it 'occasionally visits' Sweden in summer, and Smyrna in winter, and that it has been found in Corfu, Sicily, Crete,—Whittlesea Mere,—and Yarley Fen;—in marshes always, wherever it is; (nothing said of its behavior on ice,) and not generally found farther north than Cumberland. Its food is rather nasty—water-slugs and the like,—but it is itself as fat as an ortolan, "almost melts in the hand." ... — Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... mythological strata. This stands towering out in lonely sublimity, like the everlasting granite of the Alps or the Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and Hesiodean theogonies. "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness ... — Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... puts out their eyes, Turns them to tears and words? Ah my sweet knight, You have the better of us that weave and weep While the blithe battle blows upon your eyes Like rain and wind; yet I remember too When this last year the fight at Corrichie Reddened the rushes with stained fen-water, I rode with my good men and took delight, Feeling the sweet clear wind upon my eyes And rainy soft smells blown upon my face In riding: then the great fight jarred and joined, And the sound ... — Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye, And ... — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... northern quadrant was a great fen of colour and cloud, that spread ribs of feathery pink, fleece-frilled, from the horizon to the zenith. It was all amazing. Four sunsets at the one time in the sky! Each quadrant glowed, and burned, and pulsed with a ... — The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... blade of grass, Each towering peak and mountain pass; Each forest, river, lake and fen Reveals the God of worlds and men; His works of wisdom prove to ... — Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... a considerable amount of ground, but the work was not heavy. The church was one of the fine edifices for which the fen country is so famous, and the vicarage was a comfortable house, with large and very beautiful gardens and paddock, and with outlying fields. The people were farmers and laborers, with a sprinkling of shopkeepers; the only "society" ... — Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... Swamp he speeds— His path was rugged and sore, Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds, And man ... — The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... county it forms the northern portion, with a jurisdiction partially separate; within its bounds there are, besides the city of Ely, several towns and villages, as Wisbech, March, Chatteris, &c. and the former great waste of marsh and fen has become, by means of drainage, a fertile corn-growing district of great importance. Ely is believed to have taken its name from Elig in the Saxon tongue, signifying a willow; or from Elge in the Latin of Bede ... — Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... walls of Esens. Was it connected with Bensersiel too, or the country between? I searched the ordnance map again, standing up to get a better light and less jolting. There was the road northwards from Esens to Bensersiel, passing through dots and chess-board squares, the former meaning fen, the latter fields, so the reference said. Something else, too, immediately caught my eye, and that was a stream running to Bensersiel. I knew it at once for the muddy stream or drain we had seen at the harbour, issuing through the sluice ... — Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... which flows through the forest from the marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You may see these serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush, or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers—lithe monsters, slippery and speckled, the tyrants of the fen. ... — Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... a rural Venice, Its broad lagoons where yonder fen is; As lovely as the Bay of Naples Yon placid cove amid the maples; And in my neighbor's field of corn I recognize the ... — Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... consuls.(758) Hannibal having advice that the latter was advanced already as far as Arretium, a town of Tuscany, resolved to go and engage him as soon as possible. Two ways being shown him, he chose the shortest, though the most troublesome, nay, almost impassable, by reason of a fen which he was forced to go through. Here the army suffered incredible hardships. During four days and three nights they marched halfway up the leg in water, and, consequently, could not get a moment's sleep. Hannibal himself, who ... — The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... brakes they wind, And ford wild creeks where men have drowned; They skirt the pool, a void the fen, And so till night, when down they lie, They steeds still saddled, in wooded ground: Rein in hand they slumber then, Dreaming ... — Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... sedges of the fen Open their hearts and blossom to the sky; The wild thyme on the mountain's knees Unrolls its purple market to the bees; Unharvested of men The Traveller's Joy can only smile and die. Joy, joy alone the throbbing whitethroats bring, Joy to themselves and ... — Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... our Lorde 1402. certaine of the Hans, of Rostok, and of Wismer, tooke vpon the coast of England, neere vnto Plimmouth a certaine barge called the Michael of Yarmouth (whereof Hugh ap Fen was the owner, and Robert Rigweys the master) laden with bay salt, to the quantitie of 130. wayes, and with a thousand canuasse clothes of Britaine, and doe as yet detaine the saide goods in their possession, the said Hugh being endamaged, ... — The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... reduced, the Earl now proceeded toward the more important city which he had determined to besiege. Zutphen, or South-Fen, an antique town of wealth and elegance, was the capital of the old Landgraves of Zutphen. It is situate on the right bank of the Yssel, that branch of the Rhine which flows between Gelderland ... — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... washed with vast and rapid rivers, whose peculiar qualities strike horror into mortals. Cocytus falls with an impetuous roaring; Phlegethon rages with a torrent of flames; the Acharusian fen is dreadful for its stench and filth: nor does Charon, the ferryman, who wafts souls over, occasion any less horror; Cerberus, the triple-headed dog, stands ready with open mouths to receive them; and the Furies shake ... — Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... fen-land in Lincolnshire, producing the heaviest wheat crops in England; and Harlaem Lake, in Holland, with its 40,000 acres of fertile land, far below the tides, and once covered with many feet of water, are examples of what science and well-directed labor ... — Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... a braw fellow, [fine] In poortith I might mak a fen'; [poverty, shift] What care I in riches to wallow, If I maunna marry Tam Glen? ... — Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... at his meat, In a farm-house they call Spelunca, sited By the sea-side, among the Fundane hills, Within a natural cave; part of the grot, About the entry, fen, and overwhelm'd Some of the waiters; others ran away: Only Sejanus with his knees, hands, face, O'erhanging Caesar, did oppose himself To the remaining ruins, and was found In that so labouring posture by the soldiers That came to succour him. ... — Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... there, or devoting their lives to piety within its walls. It was here that Guthlac, a Saxon warrior, disgusted with the world, sought solitude and repose; and for ten long years he led a hermit's life in that damp and marshy fen; in prayer and fasting, working miracles, and leading hearts to God, he spent his lonely days, all which was rewarded by a happy and peaceful death, and a sanctifying of his corporeal remains—for many wondrous miracles were wrought by those ... — Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... Knight, And cut a two his bond; And took him in his hand a bow, And bade him by him stand. "Leave thy horse thee behind, And learn for to run! Thou shalt with me to green wood Through mire, moss, and fen! Thou shalt with me to green wood Without any leasing, Till that I have got us grace Of EDWARD, our ... — Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... a boy-chief of a British tribe which takes a prominent part in the insurrection under Boadicea: and after the defeat of that heroic queen he continues the struggle in the fen-country. Ultimately Beric is defeated and carried captive to Rome, where he succeeds in saving a Christian maid by slaying a lion in the arena, and is rewarded by being made the personal protector of Nero. Finally, he escapes ... — By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... music of the monastery choir that floated out to them over the tranquil water. The monks of Ely, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of King Canute, tell us that he had a strong affection for the fen country and for their church, and gave the following story in that connection. It is ... — Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... books which I have no wish to read, and well-written books which I could not read without permanent injury to my eyesight. The keeper of the bookstall, seeing me gaze vaguely along his shelves, suggests that I should take 'Fen Country Fanny' or else 'The Track of Blood' and have done with it. Not wishing to hurt his feelings, I refuse these works on the plea that I have read them. Whereon he, divining despite me that I am a superior person, ... — And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen, From grey tombstones are gathered the bones that once were women and men, And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon, For cockcrow limits our holiday - the dead of the night's ... — Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass ... — Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and on till she came to a fen, and there she gathered a lot of rushes and made them into a kind of a sort of a cloak with a hood, to cover her from head to foot, and to hide her fine clothes. And then she went on and on till she came to ... — English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... number, close bordering the water, embracing about an acre each, and situated in a low fen, draining several valleys. The excavated soil was thrown up in dykes, made tight by being beaten all over, while in a soft state, with the heavy, flat ends of Palm stalks. Lving side by side, by three connecting trenches, these ponds could be made to communicate at pleasure; ... — Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of the breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen, From grey tomb-stones are gathered the bones that once were women and men, And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon, For cockcrow limits our holiday—the ... — The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... ask you.... Isn't the reason, Fen ... isn't the reason she will not come here to pour ... — Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... memory: even so Small things far off will be remembered clear When matters both more mighty and more near, Are waxing dim to us. I, who have seen So many lands, and midst such marvels been, Clearer than these abodes of outland men, Can see above the green and unburnt fen The little houses of an English town, Cross-timbered, thatched with fen-reeds coarse and brown, And high o'er these, three gables, great and fair, That slender rods of columns do upbear Over the minster doors, and imagery Of kings, and flowers no summer field doth see, ... — The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... not stand on that mountain peak, 'in the spirit and power of Elias' (after whom it was long named), fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling with the demons of the storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-more (the monstrous Python of the lakes), which assembled at the magic ringing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the monster-quellers of old Greece, but by the spiritual force ... — The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... that the Lincolnshire Flinders were amongst the people taken over to England by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, a Dutch engineer of celebrity in his day, who undertook in 1621 to drain 360,000 acres of fen in Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. He was financed by English and Dutch capitalists, and took his reward in large grants of land which he made fit for habitation and cultivation. Vermuyden and his Flemings were ... — The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... inhabitants have at length learned to prefer fields to swamps, and fresh air to the vapour of ditches; for the greater portion have either gone into the interior, or live in suburbs extending to considerable distances. In fact, the original fen-loving Hollander has passed away, and another generation has sprung up, which prefers health and long life even to dollars and dyspepsia. Yet, what is Java, to the islands almost within her view? To Sumatra, with her one hundred and sixty thousand square miles, and Borneo, with her two hundred and ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... you a fact, sir," replied Fen-ton, "which I have witnessed with my own eyes; but we have still stranger and worse usages ... — The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Wilfrid de Thorold[2] freely holds What his stout sires held before— Broad lands for plough, and fruitful folds,— Though by gold he sets no store; And he saith, from fen and woodland wolds, From marish, heath, and moor,— To feast in his hall, Both free and thrall, Shall come ... — The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... had Umbrellas made of a palm-leaf cut and folded, so that the stem formed a handle. The same writer describes the audience-chamber of the King of Siam. In his quaint old French, he says:—"Pour tout meuble il n'y a que trois para-sol, un devant la fentre, a neuf ronds, & deux sept ronds aux deux ctz de la fentre. Le para-sol est en ce Pais-la, ce que ... — Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... agriculture reluctantly drags the plough and harrow to the field, only when scourged by necessity; the axe drops from the woodman's nerveless hand the moment his fire is scantily supplied with fuel; and the fen, undrained, sends up its noxious exhalations, to rack with cramps and agues the frame already too much enervated by a moral epidemic to creep beyond the ... — The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the elves is nearly the same As the terrible fate of men; To love, to rue, to be, and pursue A flickering wisp of the fen. We must play the game with a careless smile, Though there's nothing in the hand; We must toil as if it were worth our while Spinning our ropes of sand; And laugh, and cry, and live, and die At the waft of ... — Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... through long ages by birds that have had to get their food in swamps and shallow lakes, and were thus gradually equipped for food-getting through long ages of practice. But of course no particular bird is thus modified by circumstances. A pigeon transferred to a fen would not develop the characteristics of the heron; it would simply die for lack of food. It is rather that certain minute variations take place, for unknown reasons, in every species; and the bird which happened to be hatched out in ... — Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are but horsemen, And God is great. We hunt on hill and fen The fierce Kerait, Naiman and Eighur, Tartar and Khiounnou, Leopard and Tiger Flee at our view-halloo; We are but horsemen Cleansing the hill and fen Where wild men hide— Wild beasts abide, Mongol and Baiaghod, Turkoman, Taidjigod, Each in his den. The skies are blue, The plains are wide, Over ... — The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Thy power hath bless'd me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and ... — The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... lives of so many Englishmen, especially our soldiers and sailors, inspiring them to higher courage and more unselfish virtue. Perhaps the best example of his prose is the Prose Idylls, sketches of fen-land, trout streams, and moors, which combine his gifts so happily, his observation of natural objects, and the poetic imagination with which he transfuses these objects and brings them near to the heart of man. There were very few men who could draw such ... — Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... in front of him were perhaps fen feet high and sloped sharply to the water's edge, fairly free from tangle. Presently, McTavish localized the sound of bells as coming from the opposite bank, and expected to watch the equipage, preceded or accompanied by ... — The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... to the light shining through the darkness to keep his feet from stumbling; he does not trouble himself about what lies far before him, he attends only to his footsteps one by one. He feels he can pass safely over the "moor", the "fen", the "crag", and the "torrent", by trusting to the guidance of the light. With the dawning of the day will come the reunion with his loved ones from whom ... — Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, "The day is dreary, He cometh not," ... — The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... then, Still as a stagnant fen! Hateful to me were men, The sun-light hateful. In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear, O, ... — Selections From American Poetry • Various
... pressed only by the latter motive, to transport himself into New England, now become the retreat of the more zealous among the Puritanical party; and it was an order of council which obliged them to disembark and remain in England. The earl of Bedford, who possessed a large estate in the fen country near the Isle of Ely, having undertaken to drain these morasses, was obliged to apply to the king; and by the powers of the prerogative, he got commissioners appointed, who conducted that work, and divided the new-acquired land among the ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... of their cabins, The fields of their corn, Unwarned and unweaponed, The victims were torn,— By the whirlwind of murder Swooped up and swept on To the low, reedy fen-lands, The Marsh of ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the dizhmal shwamp he shpeeds— His path is rugged and sore, Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, And many a fen where the serpent feeds, And birrud niver flew before— And niver ... — Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... move "cursu undoso," rising and falling in curves, like the other species mentioned before. In different parts of this kingdom people call them fen-crickets, churr-worms, and ... — The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... who through a fen Of filthy darkness grope: We did not dare to breathe a prayer, Or to give our anguish scope: Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead ... — Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... proceeding Macbeth, more suo, continued to mutter like a man in a troubled dream, now humming a bar of the tune, now drawling out a phrase from the words, "O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till the night is gone"—this, I believe, he repeated several times, lighting his pipe in the intervals and spitting out of the door. Then he went on more articulately: "Rum go, ain't it—me singing that hymn in a place like this? Sung it in church 'undreds ... — Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... shorter an' the air a keener snap; Apples now are droppin' into Mother Nature's lap; The mist at dusk is risin' over valley, marsh an' fen An' it's just as plain as ... — Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... relationship of Sussex to this great event. All the chapters in Mr. Freeman's great history do not impress the imagination so strongly as this one fact, that William the Conqueror has always been Duke William to the Sussex folk. He was Duke William to the fen folk, too. They fought for their belief and were compelled to accept his kingship. The Sussex folk fought, too, and they handed down their conception of the great fight to ... — Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... unload the merchandize on board of her, and to transfer it to the steam-vessels. They then began to sail up the Nun branch of the Niger. This part of the river is most unhealthy; it is one entire swamp, covered with mangrove, cabbage, and palm trees. "The fen-damp rose in the morning cold and clammy to the feeling, and appeared like the smoke of a damp wood fire." The bodies of the natives are covered with ulcers and cutaneous eruptions; they spend a short and ... — Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... lion, rushing from his den, Amidst the plain of some wide-water'd fen, (Where numerous oxen, as at ease they feed, At large expatiate o'er the ranker mead) Leaps on the herds before the herdsman's eyes; The trembling herdsman far to distance flies; Some lordly bull (the rest dispersed and fled) ... — The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... stream and the pasture, Forest and fen were ours; Ours were the wild wood-creatures, The wild sweet berries and flowers. You have taken our heirlooms from us, And hardly you let us save Enough of our woods for a cradle, Enough of our earth for ... — Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... its poison on the ground Harmless; the silvery veil of fog went up From mouldering fen and cold, malarial pool, But brought no taint and threatened ill to none. Far off adown the mountain's craggy side From time to time the avalanche thundered, sounding Like sport of giant children, and the rocks Whereon it smote re-echoed innocently. Then ... — The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Fearful Odds O'er Moor and Fen The Wilderness Rosaleen O'Hara The Soul of Dominic Wildthorne Follow the Gleam ... — "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... by thee unawed, On that thrice hallow'd eve abroad. When goblins haunt from flood and fen, The steps of men. COLLINS'S ... — The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... there came the nameless dead,—the men Who perished in fever swamp and fen, The slowly-starved of the prison pen; And, marching beside the others, Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight, With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright; I thought—perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight— They looked as white ... — Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... thou shouldst be living at this hour And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby; England has need of thee, and so have I— She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour, League after grassy league from Lincoln tower To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen. Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men, Like a tall green volcano ... — A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... translated by Cockayne: "If a man is in the water elf disease, then are the nails of his hand livid, and the eyes tearful, and he will look downwards. Give him this for a leechdom: Everthroat, cassuck, the netherward part of fane, a yew berry, lupin, helenium, a head of marsh mallow, fen, mint, dill, lily, attorlothe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terrae, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolida; pour them over with ale, add holy water, sing this charm over them thrice [here follow some long charms which I need not extract]; these charms a man may sing ... — The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... were so soft that neither scout nor picket could bar his entrance. His paths were subterranean,—through the tepid swamp water, the shallow graves of the dead; and aerial,—through the stench of rotting animals, the nightly miasms of bog and fen. His victims were not pierced, or crushed, or mangled, but their deaths were not less terrible, because more lingering. They seemed to wither and shrivel away; their eyes became at first very bright, and afterward lustreless; their skins grew hard and sallow; their lips faded ... — Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... recline By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine; Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will In the fen where the wild ass ... — The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... From swamps, and ponds, and marshy bogs, Up rose the wailings of the frogs. "What shall we do, should he have progeny?" Said they to Destiny; 'One sun we scarcely can endure, And half-a-dozen, we are sure, Will dry the very sea. Adieu to marsh and fen! Our race will perish then, Or be obliged to fix Their dwelling in the Styx!' For such an humble animal, The frog, I ... — A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... mess!" said Osbert. "There's Orme of the Fen run off, because I gave him a scolding for his impudence: and it is his turn to watch to-night. I have not a minute to go after him; I ... — One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... "The man is foolish who comes here alone in the dark shade of night: fire is flickering, howes are opening, field and fen are aflame," and flees into the woods, but Hervoer is dauntless and goes on alone. She reaches the howes, and calls ... — The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... wird Schwefel zu schwefliger Sure[4] verbrannt (SO{2}SO{2}) oder es[5] werden in geeigneten Rostfen natrlich vorkommende Metallsulfide, z. B. Schwefelkies (FeS{2}), Zinkblende (ZnS), Bleiglanz (PbS) in der Glhhitze bei Luftzutritt oxydiert, wobei sich der Schwefel der Sulfide ganz oder teilweise in schwefligsaures ... — German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... gentlemen, swept by at the end of a long glade. He fancied she waved her hand to him; but being in no humour to join the cavalcade, he remained seated, and the riders soon passed out of sight. As he sat there sombre thoughts came to him, stealing up like exhalations from the fen. He saw his life stretched out before him, full of broken purposes and ineffectual effort. Public affairs were in so perplexed a case that consistent action seemed impossible to either party, and their chief efforts were bent toward directing the choice of a regent. ... — The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the rogue, sharply, "a pullet in the pen is worth a hundred in the fen. Come, we will deal kindly with thee: give us fifty, ... — Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... rival factions, family intrigues, and petty annexations at the cost of various Tartar tribes, and of small, but ancient, Chinese principalities, occupied most of its time. It must be repeated here, however, that, notwithstanding Tartar neighbours, the valley of the River Fen had been the seat of several of China's oldest semi-mythical emperors-possibly even of dynasties,-and at no time do the Tartars seem to have ever succeeded in ousting the Chinese from South Shan Si. The official name of the ... — Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... had been gradually accumulating. Few Exhibitions were given and the surplus was put into the capital account. In 1780 the general fund borrowed L160 from the Exhibition money in order to enclose some new allotments in Walling Fen, in accordance with an Act of Parliament. The result was startling. The first year gave them a new rent-roll of L40, the second year saw ... — A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... Forked Beard (TVAESKAEG, Double-beard, "TWA-SHAG") was not born; and the Monks of Ely had not yet (by about a hundred years) begun that singing, (Without note or comment, in the old, BOOK OF ELY date before the Conquest) is preserved this stave;—giving picture, if we consider it, of the Fen Country all a lake (as it was for half the year, till drained, six centuries after), with Ely Monastery rising like an island in the distance; and the music of its nones or vespers sounding soft and far over the solitude, eight hundred years ... — History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... of Falerii Rushed on the Roman Three; And Lausulus of Urgo, The rover of the sea; And Aruns of Volsinium, Who slew the great wild boar, The great wild boar that had his den Amid the reeds of Cosa's fen. And wasted fields and slaughtered men ... — Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Boys usually have one shooter made from agate which they call a "real." To change the position of the shooter is called "roundings," and to object to this or to any other play is expressed by the word "fen." The common game of marbles is to make a rectangular ring and to shoot from a line and endeavour to knock the marbles or "mibs" of one's opponents out of the square. A similar game is to place all the mibs in a line in an oval and to roll the shooter from a distance. The one coming nearest to ... — Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... hut was situated in the very heart of the fen country, now drained and cultivated, but in the year 870 untouched by the hand of man, the haunt of wild-fowl and human fugitives. At the door of the hut stood a lad some fourteen years old. His only garment was a short sleeveless tunic girded in at the waist, his arms and legs were ... — The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... his retainers led up a poor, cringing old man, as pale as a candle, and all shaking with the fen fever. ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of profit was refused, they had nevertheless persisted in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of their outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have dragged any one drowning creature out of the current of the stream, and not expected payment therefor), such expenditure would have precisely corresponded to the use of his power made, in the first instance, by our ... — The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... tolerably well supported. Dionysius tells us that the Aboriginals having assigned to those Pelasgi, whom the oracle sent from Dodona into Italy, the marshy and unprofitable land called Velia, they soon drained the fen:—their love of husbandry contributed, no doubt, to form the peculiar character ... — Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to the north of Pickering, known as Newton Dale, with its precipitous sides rising to a height of 300 or even 400 feet, must have assumed its present proportions principally during the glacial period when it formed an overflow valley from a lake held up by ice in the neighbourhood of Fen Bogs and Eller Beck. This great gorge is tenanted at the present time by Pickering Beck, an exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous ... — The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... my moorland home, Nymph of Torridge, proud I come; Leaving fen and furzy brake, Haunt of eft and spotted snake, Where to fill mine urns I use, Daily with Atlantic dews; While beside the reedy flood Wild duck leads her paddling brood. For this morn, as Phoebus gay Chased through heaven the night mist gray, ... — Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley |