"Fern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Colocasia, Colocasia esculenta and macrorhizon), is an important esculent root in the Polynesian islands. In the dry method of culture practised on the mountains of Hawaii, the roots are protected by a covering of fern leaves. The cultivation of taro is hardly a process of multiplication, for the crown of the root is perpetually replanted. As the plant endures for a series of years, the tuberous roots serve at some of the rocky groups as a security against famine. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... produces, are several kinds of kangaroos, of the same species, but differing in size and colour. Beasts of prey have never been seen in the colony. The birds are, parrots, cockatoos, and a large one called emus, which have very long legs and scarcely any wings; they in general live upon fern, and weigh from seventy to eighty pounds; there are likewise a number of black swans. The woods abound with a number of dangerous reptiles, such as ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... land,' I beg to answer most decidedly in the affirmative. It is well known that these Aborigines in no instance cultivate the soil, but subsist entirely by hunting and fishing, and on the wild roots they find in certain localities (especially the common fern), with occasionally a little wild honey; indigenous fruits being exceedingly rare. The whole race is divided into tribes, more or less numerous, according to circumstances, and designated from the localities they inhabit; for although universally a wandering ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... that fellow Shaw if he doesn't keep off our land. I've had enough of it. They say he rode his confounded plough horse all over the west end the other day." Penelope smiled reflectively. "Trampled the new fern beds out of existence and all that. Hang him, Tompkins will get him if he persists. He has told the men to take a shot at the rascal on sight. Tompkins doesn't ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... pointed hoods pricked with fern leaves whirled about these edifices in the airiest fashion. It was common to see them leap up to the height of two or three storeys from the lava pavement and rebound like balls, their faces meanwhile preserving that ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... semicircular hole, through which the pigeons crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; and from this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figure of the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the soft brown fern, which, from its abundance, was used on Egdon in packing away stores of all kinds. The pigeons were flying about her head with the greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visible above the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as she stood half-way ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... handy, far from speculative, and yet good at succedaneum: when his anger is kindled, it descends like lightning: unlike his dog, his wrath gives no notice by grumbling: he blazes up like one of his own fires of dried fern. Quarrels do not often take place among them, but when they do, they are dreadful. The laws of the country in which they sojourn have so far banished the use of knives from among them that they only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... would provide for the future beauty of your lawn or roadside, plant at least a few trees of the new Stabler Black Walnut. Its luxuriant fern-like foliage and its weeping twigs make it unique among shade trees—its thin-shelled nuts and heavy bearing habit put it at the top of the list as a nut producer. The only black walnut that yields a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Once at the sacred heat that opens regions beyond ordinary vision, imagination has its own laws; and where characters are so real as to be treated as existences, their creator himself cannot help them having their own wills and ways. Fern the farm-labourer is not here, nor yet his niece the little Lilian (at first called Jessie) who is to give to the tale its most tragical scene; and there are intimations of poetic fancy at the close of my sketch which the published story ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... remind Jacob if the larder was for many days deficient in that meat. Jacob had gone out accordingly; he had gained his leeward position of a fine buck, and was gradually nearing him by stealth, now behind a huge oak-tree, and then crawling through the high fern, so as to get within shot unperceived, when on a sudden the animal, which had been quietly feeding, bounded away and disappeared in the thicket. At the same time Jacob perceived a small body of horse galloping through the glen in which the buck had been feeding. Jacob had never ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... there was not a single living thing left. I didn't know about this, when I spoke to your man Democritus. I have ordered the service of Rhosian ware. But, hallo! what are you thinking of? You generally serve us up a dinner of herbs on fern-pattern plates, and the most sparkling of baskets: what am I to expect you to give on porcelain? I have ordered a horn for Phemius: one will be sure to turn up; I only hope he may play ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... you were exhausting the possibilities of the language. Before long you'll have to be calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 'Oh' was a mistake. You should have started with 'Red.' Then you could have had Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern—and, and all the rest of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... proprietor had discovered the jewels during his occupancy, and that, like a prudent man, he kept his own counsel in the matter. But Sir Ralph still clung to the belief that somewhere in his grounds, "near the water and by the fern," the wealth he now so sorely needed lay concealed. That in this faith Sir Ralph lived and died was proved by his will, in which he bequeathed to the younger of his two sons, "and to his heirs," the jewels and other specified valuables which the testator firmly believed ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... immense genius is concealed under this unpolished person of his. Finally, sift yourself thoroughly, whether nature has originally sown the seeds of any vice in you, or even an ill-habit [has done it]. For the fern, fit [only] to be ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... into the water, and rushed to the spot where his brother's body lay. With a burst of passionate affection, he flung himself on his knees beside it, and took the cold hand in his own—the little rigid hand in which the green blades of grass, and fern, and heath, so tightly clutched, were unconscious of the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... his throat. They boy laughed again, a laugh in which the snarl had nearly driven out the chuckle, and then, with another of his astonishing lightning movements, plunged out of view into a yielding tangle of weed and fern. ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... the dusty road until he came to a point where the narrow bridlepath branched off the road and wound upward into the silent woods. Following this path until it became indistinguishable on a thick carpet of moss and leaves and coarse fern, he reached the big boulder at last; there he left Keno safely tied and hidden in a clump of alders. Then he went on, several rods down the trail, and took up his position directly across the stream from ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... city is a lesser range, upon which to their very tops grow dense groves of palm and other fern-like trees. In the shelter of these groves are many ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... future summer of buds safe nestled on its bosom, as a mother reposes with her baby at her breast. The same security of life pervades every woody shrub: the alder and the birch have their catkins all ready for the first day of spring, and the sweet-fern has even now filled with fragrance its folded blossom. Winter is no such solid bar between season and season as we fancy, but only a slight check and interruption: one may at any time produce these March blossoms by bringing the buds into the warm house; and the petals ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... speak again among the hills that we dived into; the air grew chillier as we climbed; forest and wet rocks closed round us in the mist, to the sound of waters trickling alongside; there was a tang of wet fern, cut pine, and the first breath of autumn when the road entered a tunnel ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... hostile scouts searching the obvious bits of cover, but they did not find me there; and, like the elephant hunter among the fern trees, or a boar in a cotton crop, so a boy in the currant bushes is invisible to the enemy, while he can watch every move of the ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... pattern on it. His face, yellow as wax, with closed eyes and bluish eyelids, was turned towards the ceiling, no breathing could be discerned: he seemed a corpse. At his feet knelt the Malay, also wrapt in a red shawl. He was holding in his left hand a branch of some unknown plant, like a fern, and bending slightly forward, was gazing fixedly at his master. A small torch fixed on the floor burnt with a greenish flame, and was the only light in the room. The flame did not flicker nor smoke. The Malay did not stir at Fabio's entry, he merely turned his eyes upon him, and again bent ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... is impassable for horses. It has a very picturesque appearance; immense masses of rock—some thousands of tons in weight—which had fallen from the top of the cliff into the bed of the creek. Mr. Kekwick found a number of new plants, among them a fine climbing fern. Light winds, east. Plenty of permanent water in the creek. Latitude, 14 degrees ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... searched, and called aloud. But no child could she perceive or hear anywhere around. She returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked in the same direction, but nothing reappeared. The only object at all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the colour of a fair child's hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze. This, however, did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to make inquiries of the man whom she had left at work, removing ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... describe this dell as it should be described; and I will therefore only beg of thee, gentle reader, who peradventure mayst not have lingered in this classical neighbourhood, to fancy a deep, deep dell, its steep sides fringed down with hazel and beech, and fern and thick undergrowth, and clothed at the bottom with the richest and greenest sward in the world. You descend, clinging to the trees, and scrambling as best you may,—and now you stand on haunted ground! Tread softly, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shrubbery, for in such matters my mother was very strict and particular: Abeleia grandiflora, Laurestinus, Olea fragrans, Ligustrum napalense, Rosa watsoniana—— Now really could that thing be a rose? It looked more like a cross between a fern and an ostrich plume. I looked closer. Each slender light green leaf was mottled with lighter green, a miracle of exquisite tracing, and the thing was in bud, millions and millions of buds no bigger than the eggs in a shad roe. Yes, it was a rose. I looked ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... by side for miles through the jungle of fern and palm, and then began to enter a more open but scrubby country. The scouts could be seen half a mile ahead. Not a sign of natives had been discovered on the march. More than once Barre had expressed his anxiety at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... away," I said, "for the next carnage will not only stop, but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with "Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy shadow of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... the uncomfortable sounding Akenside (oak), Fearenside (fern), but Heaviside appears to be a nickname. Handyside may mean "gracious manner," from Mid. Eng. side, cognate with Ger. Sitte, custom. See Hendy (Chapter XXII). The simple end survives as Ind or Nind (Chapter III) and in Overend (Chapter XII), ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... gives me little pleasure. I miss the deer; and when the first park that one ever knew was Buxted, with its moving antlers above the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle—even for Alderneys—is the meadow. Cows in ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... interested, but Mrs. John Coulson drew her away towards the palm and fern-embowered door of the drawing-room. She was somewhat disappointed at the news of Mrs. Oliver's non-appearance, for that meant that neither was Mrs. Jarvis present. The fates did seem ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... up from Hepburn to please her. Behind the house a bit of uneven ground with clothes-lines strung across it stretched up to a dry wall, and beyond the wall a patch of corn and a few rows of potatoes strayed vaguely into the adjoining wilderness of rock and fern. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... no second warning. There was a rush for the boats by all but Janstins, who seemed as one amazed, and incapable of action at the sight of the monster. I could not leave him to the fate which threatened him, so, running to his assistance, I dragged him down behind some fern trees, where we hid out of sight of the mother-bird, who seemed bewildered by the unaccustomed sound of firearms, and perplexed at the death of her chick, for which she could not account. But we both knew ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... years return And hearts unwounded sing again, Comes Taffy dancing through the fern To lead the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... behind it—a hush of light, deeply pervasive and friendly. The sunshine slanted across the gleaming wet rocks in the river, lit up the rain-darkened trunks of the hemlocks, glinted on the low-hanging leaves, and flashed through the dripping edges of sagging fern fronds. As twilight came on, we canoed across to the side of the river where the road lay—the other side was steep and pathless woods—and walked down to the nearest farmhouse to buy eggs for the morning. Back again by the ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... and painting never. Colour is life.—We are now at the end of this magnificent avenue, and at the top of a steep eminence commanding a wide view over four counties—a landscape of snow. A deep lane leads abruptly down the hill; a mere narrow cart-track, sinking between high banks clothed with fern and furze and low broom, crowned with luxuriant hedgerows, and famous for their summer smell of thyme. How lovely these banks are now—the tall weeds and the gorse fixed and stiffened in the hoar-frost, which fringes round the bright prickly holly, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... do you see now once again The glen And fern, the highland, and the thistle? And do you still remember when We heard the bright-eyed woodcock whistle Down by the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... the fern fronds tall Fashion a lace-work over your head, Hemming you in with a high, green wall; Then, when the thrush calls once, stop dead. Ask of the old grey wallaby there— Him prick-eared by the woollybutt tree— How to encounter ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... in the fading light, These men of battle, with grave, dark looks, As plain to be read as open books, While slowly gathered the shades of night. The fern on the slope was splashed with blood, And down in the corn, where the poppies grew, Were redder stains than the poppies knew; And crimson-dyed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ascension of the night We heard the mellow lapsing and return Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight Through lanes of darkling fern. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... vegetable ivory tree remained, with a great profusion of wonderful orchids, among which I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia Vexillaria and the glorious pink and scarlet blossoms of Cattleya and odontoglossum. Occasional brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped banks gurgled down the shallow gorges in the hill, and offered good camping-grounds every evening on the banks of some rock-studded pool, where swarms of little blue-backed fish, about the size and shape of English trout, gave ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and set out again over the bracken-covered hill-side. Another half-mile and they had reached the bourne of their expedition. The narrow track through the gorse and fern widened suddenly into a lane, a lane with very high, unmortared walls, over which grew a variety of bramble with a particularly luscious fruit. Every connoisseur of blackberries knows what a difference there is between the little hard seedy ones that commonly flourish ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... results of his labour, painted the wide landscape in every direction. On mountain sides, and across the undulating lowland, wall or hedge mapped his conquests of nature, little plots won by the toil of successive generations for pasture or for tillage, won from the reluctant wilderness, which loves its fern and gorse, its mosses and heather. Near and far were scattered the little white cottages, each a gleaming speck, lonely, humble; set by the side of some long-winding, unfrequented road, or ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt.[19] 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief[20] 195 With quaint arabesques[21] of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200 Which crystalled the beams ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... and the telegraph posts seem to have started off into a frantic gallopade along the line, we plunge into a plantation. Long vistas of straggling trees—and leaf-strewn pathways winding in among them—give way to scattered clumps of firs and tangled masses of fern and brushwood, while broken fences come dancing up between, and then shrink down again behind rising knolls covered with a sudden growth of gorse and heather. A pit yawns into a pond; the pond squeezes itself longways into a thin ditch, which turns off sharply at a corner, and leaves ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... by an enclosure from the open country, and divided by numerous hedges into small fields. In some of these fields the rye, the pease, and the oats were high enough to conceal a man. Others were overgrown with fern and brambles. A poor woman reported that she had seen two strangers lurking in this covert. The near prospect of reward animated the zeal of the troops. It was agreed that every man who did his duty in the search should have a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it. He carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. And by-and-by the master says, "Well done," and takes it away and gives him another block and tells him to work on that. And so he works on that from the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he only knows that he is ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... loiter by the old oak tree, Where waters ripple over clean white stones, And cresses, mint with feathered fern grown high. In such a place the peaceful thoughts will come; There is no hurry there where nature plays. Soft gentle breezes wave the grass and sedge; White fluffy clouds pass overhead and roll. Now dreaming, I hear the cricket's gay song. O river bank ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... Verne's romances. Big canoes, manned by dark-skinned men in white turbans and loin-cloths, floated round our ship, or lay poised on the clear depths of aquamarine water, with fairy freights—forests of coral white as snow, or red, pink, violet, in massive branches or fern-like sprays, fresh from their warm homes beneath the clear warm waves, where fish as bright-tinted as themselves flash through them like "living light." There were displays of wonderful shells, too, of pale rose-pink, and others with rainbow tints which, like rainbows, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... live? Oh, just anywhere—all about; among the fern, in the long grass, down on the sands, in all the places babies ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... as I passed Down beechen alleys beautiful and dim, Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim, And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim. Here, then, that magic summoning would cease, Or sound far off again among the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. It was a characteristic of Will that while he was so fanciful in his interpretation, the smallest, commonest text sufficed him. The strolls of these short autumn ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... a wild currant bush, glistening with its luscious black berries, and began nibbling at them. A gopher, coming to his supper bush, gave a little squeak of annoyance, and Peter saw the bright eyes of the midget glaring at him from under a big fern leaf. Peter wagged his tail, for the savagery of his existence was qualified by that mellowing sense of humor which had always been a part of his master. He yipped softly, in a companionable sort ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... our fern-house, which is just beyond here," she said. "We have got such exquisite maidenhairs and such a splendid Killarney fern. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... alone, before the green grass would be covered, and the old apple-trees would grow mossy and die for lack of room and sunlight in the midst of the young woods. It was a perfect acre of turf, only here and there I could already see a cushion of juniper, or a tuft of sweet fern or bayberry. I walked the horse about slowly, picking a hard little yellow apple here and there from the boughs over my head, and at last I found a cellar all grown over with grass, with not even a bit of a crumbling brick to be seen in the hollow of it. No doubt there were some underground. It ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... haply winter have forgotten one green leaf for our home vase—in vain we rake, freezing our fingers through our fur gloves—there is not one. An icicle has pierced every heart; and there are no fern leaves except those miniature ones which each plant is holding in its heart, to be sent up in next summer's hour of joy. But here are mosses—tufts of all sorts; the white, crisp and crumbling, fair as winter frostwork; and here the feathery green of which French ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... are mines of carbon once abstracted from the atmosphere by plants. In these coal-beds are often found fern leaves, toads, whole trees, and in short all forms of organized matter. These all existed as living things before the great floods, and at the breaking away of the barriers of the immense lakes, of which our present lakes were ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... while coming," said Rob, after another pause, during which they watched the stars overhead, smelt the sweet fern crushed under foot, and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of my archipelago tell very much the same story as the birds and the plants. Here, too, winged species have stood at a great advantage. To be sure, the earliest butterflies and bees that arrived in the fern-clad period were starved for want of honey; but as soon as the valleys began to be thickly tangled with composites, harebells, and sweet-scented myrtle bushes, these nectar-eating insects established themselves successfully, and kept their breed true by occasional crosses with fresh arrivals ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... commoners, trespasses in the fence month and winter haining, and in the enclosures; keeping hogs, sheep, goats, and geese, being uncommonable animals, in the Forest; cutting and burning the nether vert, furze, and fern; gathering and taking away the crabs, acorns, and mast; and other purprestures and offences; carrying away such timber trees as were covertly cut down in the night time; by which practices several ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... come from haunts of coot{1} and hern,{2} I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker{3} down ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... scores of these beautiful crystals and never duplicate a figure. Some are almost solid and tabular, others are simple stars or fern-branched. Then we may detect compound forms, crystals within crystals, and, rarest of all, doubles, where two different forms appear as joined together by a tiny pillar. In all of these we have an epitome of the crystals of the rocks beneath our ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the pine trees far up above, and while it lasted it deadened the jarring discord of the human tones. She sat quite motionless upon the log, not lifting a finger nor speaking a word, as she had promised, and her gaze was fixed steadily upon a bit of dried fern growing between the roots of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... jolly bunch assembled to squabble good-naturedly over the various packages and bundles assigned to them to be carried. Under the hostess's direction they betook themselves via footpath and trail to a stone-walled pasture spicy with sweet fern. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... Walter Scott, to read aloud to him while he sketched, or to read him to sleep with very often. And then what delight it had been to sit by his side while he lay at full length upon the mossy turf, or half-buried in fern—to sit by him supremely happy, reading or drawing, and looking up from her occupation every now and then to glance at the sleeper's handsome ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Think'st thou scorn of him? Hath a near view revealed him satyr-shaped Of chin and nostril? I shall hang me soon. See here ten apples: from thy favourite tree I plucked them: I shall bring ten more anon. Ah witness my heart-anguish! Oh were I A booming bee, to waft me to thy lair, Threading the fern and ivy in whose depths Thou nestlest! I have learned what Love is now: Fell god, he drank the lioness's milk, In the wild woods his mother cradled him, Whose fire slow-burns me, smiting to the bone. O thou whose glance is beauty and whose heart All marble: O dark-eyebrowed maiden mine! Cling ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... really was a bit of hollow, where no one could see them from the beach, or lane, or even from the Round-house. Scudamore, who understood his man, obeyed; and Tugwell came to his bearings on a clump of fern ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... deep in fern, Old oak, I love thee well; A thousand thanks for what I learn And what remains to tell." ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... brake or bracken fern, Pteris aquilina, has been considered responsible for the poisoning of many horses and cattle. Many cases have been reported in England and Germany, and some well-authenticated cases in the United ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... upon a broad and true generalization. In the first stratified rocks in which any organic remains are found, the highest animals are fishes, and the highest plants are cryptogams; in the middle periods reptiles come in, accompanied by fern and moss forests; in later times quadrupeds are introduced, with a dicotyledonous vegetation. So closely does the march of animal and vegetable life keep pace with the material progress of the world, that we may well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... unequivocal married person. And then you would turn over all the little things of old, and wrangle a bit over details here and there; and all the while you would be the very selfsame two that were young and were lost in the wood and trampled down the fern and saw the squirrels overhead all those ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... gloom; Is told in stony record of the roar Of long Silurian storms, and tempests huge Scourging the circuit of Devonian seas; Is whispered in the noiseless mists, the gray Soft drip of clouds about rank fern-forests, Through dateless terms that stored the layered coal; Is uttered hoarse in strange Triassic forms Of monstrous life; or stamped in ice-blue gleams Athwart the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... malformed hands, lacking sometimes even three digits. But guessing this was in some way a greeting, I did the same thing by way of reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction. Then his swift roving glance went round again; he made a swift movement—and vanished. The fern fronds he had stood ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... of the season, after the first snows have fallen, but when there is still plenty of moisture in the ground, the loveliest fern-fronds of pure rime may be found in myriads on the meadows. They are fashioned like perfect vegetable structures, opening fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light into iridescent colours, appearing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Jasper," promised Polly. So he turned the corner, to go to his school. But presently he heard rapid footsteps back of him. "Oh Jasper," cried Polly, flushed and panting, as he whirled about, "tell Phronsie I won't forget the little fern-roots. Be ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From the valley arose the mellow song of meadow larks, while about them, in and out, through sunshine and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... stout sticks with which to poke among the dense undergrowth of laurel, holly, and hazel that formed such a close cover for the game of various sorts with which the wood was so thickly populated. Now and then from her form amid the withered fern a frightened hare leaped among their very feet. Startled rabbits scurried here and there over the soft moss and rustling leaves. The cry of a night-bird from time to time broke the intense stillness of the lonesome place, while more than once they were alarmed by a soft something that ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... be awakened into transcendent splendor. The echoes of the Danaan music were ringing in her still; and are now, heaven knows;—and how would they not be, when what to our eyes are the hills of her green with fern, to eyes anointed, and to the vision of the spirit, are the palaces of the Danaan Sidhe, and the topless towers ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... half-blown bud would say a great deal from a lover to his idol; and this heliotrope be most encouraging to a timid swain. Here is a rosy daisy for some merry little damsel; there is a scarlet posy for a soldier; this delicate azalea and fern for some lovely creature just out; and there is a bunch of sober pansies for a spinster, if spinsters go to 'Germans.' Heath, scentless but pretty, would do for many; these Parma violets for one with a sorrow; and this curious purple flower with ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... reappeared, drew them apart, and stood aside as his mistress swept out, the same cold blond woman I had seen in the market, but now most exquisitely clad in a pale gray gown of crepe embroidered with silver fern fronds and held at the neck by a deep collar of splendid pearls, pearl rings alone upon her hands, in her hair a spray of silver mistletoe with pearls for berries. She made an exquisite picture as she advanced swiftly to meet us, a half ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... a peasant in order to conceal himself. The peasant was discovered by the pursuers, who now redoubled the diligence of their search. At last, the unhappy Monmouth was found, lying in the bottom of a ditch, and covered with fern; his body depressed with fatigue and hunger; his mind by the memory of past misfortunes, by the prospect of future disasters. Human nature is unequal to such calamitous situations; much more the temper of a man softened by early ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... so long? Violet was tired, no doubt, but could she not have walked as fast as Eva, or was Kennedy's arm less stout than Julian's? She lingered, it seemed, with something of a conscious pleasure, now to pluck a flower or a fern, now to look at some yellow lichens on the purple crags; and once, when Julian looked back, the two were some way behind the rest of the party. They were standing on a rock gazing on the fading splendour of the mountains in front of them, while the light wind ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... knows what I'd have done if it hadn't been for her," he laughed. "I wanted to plant American Beauty roses and maiden-hair fern all over the place. I even think I had some notion of growing four-dollar orchids on the pear trees. The idea of putting in things that would really grow was ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... shedding welcome shadows on the river path; and many a bold round hill like the ballons of the Vosges, once rich of grass as they, now shorn of wood, and even of undergrowth, lift a bare stony front to the lovely sunlight, and never more will root of tree, or seed of flower or of fern, find ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... distinguish the nest-building of the California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure, which, in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity, had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... body. Its nostrils, strange to say, are at the tip of the beak. The toes are strong, and well adapted for digging, the hind one being a thick, horny spur. To add to the singularity of this creature, it has no tail whatever. The kirvi-kirvi conceals itself among the extensive beds of fern which abound in the middle island of New Zealand, and it makes a nest of fern for its eggs in deep holes, which it hollows out of the ground. It feeds on insects, and particularly worms, which it disturbs by stamping on the ground, and seizes the instant they make ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... tope, clump of trees, thicket, spinet, spinney; underwood, brushwood; scrub; boscage, bosk[obs3], ceja[Sp], chaparal, motte [obs3][U.S.].; arboretum &c. 371. bush, jungle, prairie; heath, heather; fern, bracken; furze, gorse, whin; grass, turf; pasture, pasturage; turbary[obs3]; sedge, rush, weed; fungus, mushroom, toadstool; lichen, moss, conferva[obs3], mold; growth; alfalfa, alfilaria[obs3], banyan; blow, blowth[obs3]; floret[obs3], petiole; pin grass, timothy, yam, yew, zinnia. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to Earth—her frail Decaying children dread decay. Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale, And lessens in the morning ray: Look, how, by mountain rivulet, It lingers as it upward creeps, And clings to fern and copsewood set Along the green and dewy steeps: Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings To precipices fringed with grass, Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings, And bowers of fragrant sassafras. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... seemed to see some reflection of that wizard brightness in the room; the pale walls and the white bed and his wife's face lying amidst brown hair upon the pillow were illuminated, and listening he could almost hear the corncrake in the fields, the fern-owl sounding his strange note from the quiet of the rugged place where the bracken grew, and, like the echo of a magic song, the melody of the nightingale that sang all night in the alder by the little brook. There was nothing that he could say, but he slowly ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... not talking then, so they sat through a long silence. At last he heard Edith draw a quick breath, and lifting his head he looked where she pointed. Up a fern stalk climbed a curious looking object. They watched breathlessly. By lavender feet clung a big, pursy, lavender-splotched, yellow body. Yellow and lavender wings began to expand and take on colour. Every instant great beauty became ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... fern-wove mattress lay No weary guest. St. Colum kneeled, And found no trace; but, ashen-grey, Far off ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... daily the knife-grinder and I (for as long as his tent continued pleasantly to interrupt my little wilderness) sat on two stones, and smoked, and plucked grass and talked to the tune of the brown water. His children were mere whelps, they fought and bit among the fern like vermin. His wife was a mere squaw; I saw her gather brush and tend the kettle, but she never ventured to address her lord while I was present. The tent was a mere gipsy hovel, like a sty for pigs. But the grinder himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... red-hot earth, cooling, put on an outer crust, when gravity drew into deep hollows the waters that cooled the earth and purified the upper air—and then follow on in nature's footsteps, passing up the stairway of ascending life from lichen, moss and fern, on to the culminating moment in man, we shall ever find that increase of value means an increase of time for growth. The fern asks days, the reed asks weeks, the bird for months, the beast for a handful ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... romantic view and mark our progress towards the foot of the hill. I was particularly struck, during the walk, with the richness of the undergrowth in most places, and recognised many berries and plants that resembled those of my native land, especially a tall, elegantly formed fern, which emitted an agreeable perfume. There were several kinds of flowers, too; but I did not see so many of these as I should have expected in such a climate. We also saw a great variety of small birds of bright plumage, and many paroquets similar ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the midst of an open space covered with the greenest sward, stood a mighty broad-armed oak, beneath whose ample boughs, though as yet almost destitute of foliage, while the sod beneath them could scarcely boast a head of fern, couched a herd of deer. There lay a thicket of thorns skirting a sand-bank, burrowed by rabbits, on this hand grew a dense and Druid-like grove, into whose intricacies the slanting sunbeams pierced; on that extended a long glade, formed ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... get on our dry pastures, and still less in our cultivated fields. But in these islands there are two noble species, at least, which are true swamp-ferns; the Lastraea Thelypteris, which of old filled the fens, but is now all but extinct; and the Osmunda, or King-fern, which, as all know, will grow wherever it is damp enough about the roots. In Hampshire, in Devon, and Cornwall, and in the southwest of Ireland, the King-fern too is a true swamp fern. But in the Tropics I have seen more than once noble tree-ferns growing in wet savannahs ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... night, before sunset, they can see the green feathery tops of the palm-trees before them. The palms have no branches, but only great clusters of fern-like leaves at the top of the tree, under which ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... The last year's leaves stay on through the winter brooding over the little fresh sprouts. These embryo flowers are further protected by a fuzzy covering. This reminds one of a similar protective covering which new fern leaves have. In the spring a hepatica plant wastes no time on getting a new suit of leaves. It makes its old ones do until the blossom has had its day. Then the new leaves, started to be sure before this, have a chance. These delayed, are ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... not conceal it) a journey to a place so far from Paris as the Riviera was no slight labour. Even from the roses, the palms, the siren sea, the wells of water under the fronds of maiden-hair fern, his mind travels back wistfully to the city ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... jungle, dark and gloomy—and very wet. Palm-like, the gigantic trees were, or fern-like, flinging clouds of feathery green foliage high against a somber sky ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... have been told, and do not doubt, That Devon lanes are dim with trees, And shagged with fern, and loved of bees, And all with roses pranked about; I do believe that other-where The woods are green, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... beech (Fagus sylvatica), and its weeping, purple-leaved, and fern-leaved varieties, are frequently met with in parks and may be told from the native species by its darker bark. The weeping form may, of course, be told readily by its drooping branches. The leaves of the European beeches ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... looking back, when engaged on any dealings with supernatural powers, is insisted on in the tales and practices of the Russians, Eskimos, Zulus, and the Khonds of Orissa. In Russia the watcher for the golden fern-flower must seize it the instant it blossoms and run home, taking care not to look behind him: whether through fear of giving the demons, who also watch for it, power over him, or whether through a dread of the flower losing its magic powers if this precaution is neglected, Mr. Ralston ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... cathedral, another of a huge crouching lion, all known to the two cousins by name, and owned as familiar friends. On the other side, between two hills, each surmounted by its own rocky crest, lay nestled in woods the grey Church tower and cottages of the village of Fern Torr; and far away stretched the rich landscape of field, wood, and pasture, ending at length in the blue line of horizon, where sky and ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... lay slices of bread on top of the stove," she explained. "She said she always makes toast that way, and no one could tell the difference! I never heard of such a thing—did you, Manley? But I've been attending a cooking school ever since you left Fern Hill. I didn't tell you—I wanted it for a surprise. I could have done better with the toast before a wood fire—I think poor Arline was nearly distracted at the way I poked coals down from the grate; but she didn't say anything. Isn't it funny, to have ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... fern-seed doth bestow, The kernel of the mistletoe; And here and there as Puck should go, With terror to affright him, She night-shade strews to work him ill, Therewith her vervain and her dill, That hindreth witches of their will, Of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... and Mr. MacAngus had given them, speaking as an old campaigner, some very useful if simple hints, such as always pitching the tent with its back to the wind; and keeping inside a supply of dry wood to light the fires with; and tying fern on Moses's head, against the flies; and carrying cabbage leaves in their own hats, against the heat; and walking with long staves instead of short walking sticks—after this he made them all sit round their fire, and sketched them, and the picture hangs ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... was, if possible, yet more surprising, namely, the whole of Will Fern's finest speech: an address full of rustic eloquence that one can't help feeling sure would have told wonderfully as Dickens could have delivered it. However, the story, foreshortened though it was, precisely as he related it, was told with a due regard to its ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... sacrilegious feet carry me a little way within that violated enclosure. But it was only a very tiny raid we made. We stood quietly for two or three minutes, just feeling the place, then scurried hastily away like two timorous hares; and as I have since lost a much prized little fern-leaf plucked within the enclosure, I think Mr. Tennyson should agree that this intrusive American has been quite severely enough punished, and that much ought to be forgiven one who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... are bunches of cactus with prickly leaves. Look out! don't catch your toe in those sea-ferns. Even that sweet green maiden-hair fern might pin down your foot so firmly that it would take a fish's sharp ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... but sent at the florist's discretion, not chosen to suit her gown, and it did not suit it, so that she could not have used it in any case; yet she put it down with a sigh. The next was of yellow roses, violets, and maidenhair fern, very sweet: "With Lord Groome's compliments," she read on the card that was tied to it. "He is back then, I suppose," she thought. "Funny old man! Very sorry, but you won't do." The next was from one of the survivals, a man she loathed. She thought it an impertinence for him to have sent her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... many a briered rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green holly copse where lurked the woodcock, and arcades of zigzag oak, Frida kept her bridal robe from spot, or rent, or blemish. Passing all these little pleadings of the life she had always loved, at last she turned ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... riddles.... Come, little boy, come and look! The instinct of the salmon for the sea. The river where he was spawned hurries to the sea, and his instinct is to go with it, not against it.... It deepens and broadens, and ahead is always a clearer pool, a more shadowy rock, a softer water-fern. It is pleasant to swim under the sallow-branches, and rapids whip.... And there is the lull of an estuary, and the chush-chush of little waves, and he is in the sea.... And now he must lay his own course.... The lure of the river ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closer among the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House, only it was quite momentary. The stick which she had half-lifted, an unconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor, and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... of the cavern, brought him again to a consideration of his predicament. He could not be restrained from speech, however—though, as he spoke, the old women saluted his face on all hands with strokes from brushes of fern, which occasioned him no small inconvenience. But he had gone too far now to recede; and, in a broken manner—broken as much by his own hurry and vehemence as by the interruptions to which he was subjected—he contrived to say enough to Lucy of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... my Lord being gone before my coming to chapel. I and Mr. Sheply told out my money, and made even for my Privy Seal fees and gratuity money, &c., to this day between my Lord and me. After that to chappell, where Dr. Fern, a good honest sermon upon "The Lord is my shield." After sermon a dull anthem, and so to my Lord's (he dining abroad) and dined with Mr. Sheply. So, to St. Margarett's, and heard a good sermon upon the text "Teach us the old way," or something like it, wherein ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... on the ground beside his upturned "billy," and the fern about the spring looked as if it ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Weird Sisters crooning over their horrible cauldron? In Germany the forests are magic-mad. Walking under the huge oaks of the Thuringian Forest or the Taunus, or in the pine woods of Hesse, one can see the flutter of airy garments in the chequered sunlight falling upon fern and moss; one can glimpse goblins and kobolds hiding behind the roots and rocks; one can hear the King of the Willows[1] and the Bride of the Wind moaning and calling in the rustling of the leaves. On a summer's day the calm of pools is so complete that it seems as ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... grey on the hills. The north wind resounds through the woods. White clouds rise on the sky: the trembling snow descends. The river howls afar, along its winding course. Sad, by a hollow rock, the grey-hair'd Carryl sat. Dry fern waves over his head; his seat is in an aged birch. Clear to the roaring winds he lifts ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... than a hollow place, even as the word 'den' is," says John Ridd. "It is a pretty place," he adds, "though nothing to frighten any body, unless he hath lived in a gallipot." The valley is well protected from the wind, and "there is shelter and dry fern-bedding and folk to be seen in the distance from a bank whereon the sun shines." Here John Ridd came to consult the wise woman toward the end of March, while the weather was still cold and piercing. In the warm ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... into the copse along the green track, with the tall thistles and the fern on each side of him, he caught little bits here and there of what they were saying; it was always the same, who was going to be king, and what would Choo Hoo do? How long would it be before the emperor's army could be got together again to come sweeping back and exact a dire vengeance ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... might come to me. I had danced with her, I had talked with her under the stars, but what might she expect me not to do? And what was an Occidental, a city man, before her? She retired behind a bird's-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves of which were the shells of the mountain snail. At her feet was the bastard canna, the pungent root of which makes ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien |
