Orne

“ The Mark XX’s muzzle came around to center on Orne’s stomach. “You have not answered my question. What is the I-A?”
“I am of the I-A,” said Orne. “Where’ve you hidden the Delphinus?”
“In the place that suits us best,” said Tanub. “In all our history there has never been a better place.”
“What do you plan to do with it?” asked Orne.
“Within a year we will have a copy with our own improvements. After that—”
“You intend to start a war?” asked Orne.
“In the jungle the strong slay the weak until only the strong remain,” said Tanub. ”

“ He lumbered off one day—I hope to his brier-patch, and to his children, and to his confrères, and to all things excellent and livable and highly desirable to a bruin.
The Young Russian and The Barber escaped while I was enjoying my little visit at Orne. The former was an immensely tall and very strong boy of nineteen or under; who had come to our society by way of solitary confinement, bread and water for months, and other reminders that to err is human, etc. Unlike Harree, whom, if anything, he exceeded in strength, he was very quiet. Everyone let him alone. ”

“ It's hard to ferret out a gang of fanatics; it would, obviously, be even harder to spot a genetic line of dedicated men. But the problem Orne had was one step tougher than that!
hen the Investigation & Adjustment scout cruiser landed on Marak it carried a man the doctors had no hope of saving. He was alive only because he was in a womblike creche pod that had taken over most of his vital functions.
The man's name was Lewis Orne. He had been a blocky, heavy-muscled redhead with slightly off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy planet native. ”

“ Todd was an ardent lover of herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into the low end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier and sweet-mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and southernwood. If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far corner of her herb plot, she trod heavily upon thyme, and made its fragrant presence known with all the rest. Being a very large person, her full skirts brushed and bent almost every slender stalk that her feet missed. ”

“ I’m going to want to know how you guessed that one.”
“You are a weak fool like the others,” gritted Tanub.
“It’s too bad you formed your opinion of us by observing only the low grades of the R&R,” said Orne.
“Easy, boy,” hissed Stetson. “Don’t pick a fight with him now. Remember, his race is arboreal. He’s probably as strong as an ape.”
“I could kill you where you sit!” grated Tanub.
“You write finish for your entire planet if you do,” said Orne. “I’m not alone. There are others listening to every word we say. ”

“ The gossips at the corners nod knowingly this morning, and Orrin, whose brow is moodier than the Colonel's, walks fiercely amongst them without word and without look. He is on his way to Juliet's house, and if there is enchantment left in smiles, I bid her to use it, for her fate is trembling in the balance, and may tip in a direction of which she little recks.
Orrin has come back. Striding impetuously into the room where I sat at work, he drew [77] himself up till his figure showed itself in all its full and graceful proportions.
"Am I a man?" ”

“ She wondered what the quarrel had been about, but she did not like to ask, and as Serena still held one hand she put the other over it, while Serena took the corner of her afternoon apron to wipe away the tears.
"It's very hard to be good, isn't it, Serena dear?" asked Betty.
"It's master hard, sweetin's," answered Serena gravely,—"master hard; but it can be done with help." They sat there on the shady doorstep for some minutes without speaking. A robin was chirping loud, as if for rain, high in one of the elms overhead, and the sun was getting low. ”

“ Horne was a strange figure in Victorian poetry who gets an obscure corner in the anthologies, and is otherwise forgotten save as a friend of the Brownings. But he was a poet of great ambitions, and of a good deal more achievement than we remember. His epic poem Orion, which attained much fame in its time, and some permanent notoriety as the Farthing Epic, so called because Horne, angered by public neglect when it first appeared, contemptuously had it sold at a farthing, [144] is a very readable work for any one who cares to try it and is not afraid of poetry in long measure. ”

“ Horne’s dramas are [Pg 65] thoughtful, and they have the vigour which marked his own character. Yet Horne seems to have felt that there was something not wholly satisfactory in his dramatic work, and, except Judas Iscariot (1848) , his more noteworthy writings in later days are either prose, or lyrical verse, or epic blank verse. He is best known by Orion, an Epic Poem (1843) . It is an epic with a philosophic groundwork, ‘intended,’ as the author himself explains, ‘to work out a special design, applicable to all time, by means of antique or classical imagery and associations.... ”

“ Orion is Horne’s masterpiece. The philosophic thought clogs the epic movement, but the thought is weighty enough, and expressed with sufficient terseness and force, to be worthy of attention for its own sake. The verse is almost always good and sometimes excellent. Horne is indebted more to Keats than to anyone else. Sometimes he appears to echo him consciously ”

“ Even you don’t know everything. (as Dunn turns to Niobe, she tries to embrace him; he avoids her, and crosses quickly to Corney) Corney, ask her something about Ancient history; the more Ancient the better. ”

“ For though Lorna's father was a nobleman of high and goodly lineage, her mother was of yet more ancient and renowned descent, being the last in line direct from the great and kingly chiefs of Lorne. A wild and headstrong race they were, and must have everything their own way. Hot blood was ever among them, even of one household ”

“ Horne, “the poem was forwarded to Bulwer, and duly appeared. The next one sent,” continues Mr. Horne, “started the poetess at once on her bright and noble career.” This “next one” appears to have been “The Poet’s Vow,” and a confirmation of this supposition is seen in a letter of hers at this date to Mr. Boyd, in which she explains her not having at hand a copy of the Athenæum that he had wished to see, and adds:
“I can give you, from memory, the Athenæum’s review in that number. ”

“ Where the cross be—ye’ll not forget that, Silas Horne. Ye had a copy o’ this—no chance for a mistake, bullies—the gold’s there, restin’ safe—back to me and we’ll share it fair and square. A year ago today—ye remember the orders I wrote ye, Horne. [Threateningly.] Ye’ll not be gone more nor a year or I’ll—and if ye make port to home here at night, hang a red and a green light at the mainm’st head so I’ll see ye comin.’ A red and a green—— [He springs up suddenly and goes to a porthole to look out at the sea—disappointedly.] No light be there—but they’ll come. ”

“ The form honn- in Shetland Norn is regularly developed; horn, on the other hand, with preserved rn, is prob. due to Eng. (L.Sc.) infl. See further under horn, sb., which is found preserved in Shetl. in a few special Norn meanings.
honnek2 [hȯᶇək] , sb., a disparaging term for a girl, esp. a slatternly girl. Fe. From Fe. is reported a pl. form honneks as poss. being an obsolete term for girl, sweetheart; “is it lang [‘long’] since du saw de honneks?” Prop. the same word as the preceding? honnek, (slatternly) girl, might be an old *hyrna (No. hyrna, f., horned animal, esp. sheep) . ”

“ Yes, she has beene strucke under line, master Souldier.
Bal. I conceit you: dare you trust your selfe along with me?
Onae. I have been laden with such weights of wrong That heavier cannot presse me: hence, Cornego.
Corn. Hence Cornego, stay Captaine! when man and woman are put together some egge of villany is sure to be sate upon. [Exit.
Bal. What would you say to him should kill this man that hath you so dishonoured?
Onae. Oh, I woo'd crowne him With thanks, praise, gold, and tender of my life.
Bal. Shall I bee that Germane Fencer [195] and beat all the knocking boyes before me? ”

“ The straight box borders were all in fresh and shining green of their new leaves, and there was a fragrance of the old garden’s inmost life and soul blowing from the honeysuckle blossoms on a long trellis. It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun was low behind great apple-trees at the garden’s end, which threw their shadows over the short turf of the bleaching-green. ”

“ IV. Miss Harriet Pyne was often congratulated upon the good fortune of having such a helper and friend as Martha. As time went on this tall, gaunt woman, always thin, always slow, gained a dignity of behavior and simple affectionateness of look which suited the charm and dignity of the ancient house. She was unconsciously beautiful like a saint, like the picturesqueness of a lonely tree which lives to shelter unnumbered lives and to stand quietly in its place. ”

“ In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
But as I stood alone on the island, in the sea-breeze, suddenly there came a sound of distant voices; gay voices and laughter from a pleasure-boat that was going seaward full of boys and girls. ”

“ And though Nan smiled with the rest, and even talked with her neighbors while the tawdry curtain had fallen, it seemed to her that the coming of Death at her life's end could not be more strange and sudden than this great barrier which had fallen between her and her girlhood, the dear old life which had kept her so unpuzzled and safe. So this was love at last, this fear, this change, this strange relation to another soul. Who could stand now at her right hand and give her grace to hold fast the truth that her soul must ever be her own? ”

“ Alas, if the great wave of human interest which flooded for the first time this dull little life should sweep away the satisfactions of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb life of the forest! There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it, with tingling, eager blood coursing the channels of her whole frame, with her bare feet and fingers, that pinched and held like bird's claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself. ”

“ And the fight grew hotter and hotter, the Normans were beaten back, and returned again fiercely to the charge, down the hill, now up the hill over the palisades, like a pouring river of men, dealing stinging sword-thrusts—dropping in clumsy heaps of javelin-pricked and axe-smitten lifelessness; from swift, bright-eyed men becoming a bloody mass to stumble over, or feebly crying for mercy at the feet that trampled them; so the fight went on. ”

“ She was like a presence out of the last century, tall and still erect, dark-eyed and of striking features, and a firm look not modern, but as if her mind were still set upon an earlier and simpler scheme of life. ”

“ But the field of Senlac makes a sad and sorry sight as the light of the short October day is fading and the pale stars shine dimly through the chilly mist that gathers in from the sea. It is not like the bright Norman weather; the slow breeze carries a faint, heavy odor of fallen leaves, and the very birds give awesome cries as they fly over the battle-field. ”

“ The sea was full of life and spirit, the tops of the waves flew back as if they were winged like the gulls themselves, and like them had the freedom of the wind. Out in the main channel we passed a bent-shouldered old fisherman bound for the evening round among his lobster traps. He was toiling along with short oars, and the dory tossed and sank and tossed again with the steamer's waves. ”

“ The song sparrows sang and sang, as if with joyous knowledge of immortality, and contempt for those who could so pettily concern themselves with death. I stood watching until the funeral procession had crept round a shoulder of the slope below and disappeared from the great landscape as if it had gone into a cave. ”

“ THOMAS HENRY. He shouldn’t have such big feet. I couldn’t stop to go round.
TEACHER. Thomas Henry, you may stop after school and I’ll remind you of a little promise I made a while ago. (ONE and TWO rejoice in dumb show over THOMAS HENRY’S downfall.) Julius, stand erect. Mary, take that gum out of your mouth. Bring that apple to me. All, toe the line. Attention!
COM. Neow, scholars, there is one thing I’m very pertickler ’bout, and that is pronouncé-ation. I want every one on ye tu be keerful on that one p’int. The fust word is charitable. ”

“ The hot flood of Normans in chain-mail and pointed helmets sweeps this way, and the English with their leathern caps and their sturdy shoulders mailed like their enemies, swinging their long-handled weapons, pour back again, and so the day draws near its end, while the races mix in symbolic fashion in the fight as they must mix in government, in blood, in brotherhood, and in ownership of England while England stands. ”

“ As you drive along the narrow, grassy road, you see many charming sights and delightful nooks on either hand, where the young trees spring out of a close-cropped turf that carpets the ground like velvet. ”

“ She was eager, as all girls are, for one single controlling fate or fortune to call out all her growing energies, but she was aware at this moment that she herself must choose and provide; she must learn to throw herself heartily into her life just as it was. It was a moment of clear vision to Betty Leicester, and her cheeks flushed with bright color. It wasn't the thing one had to do, but the way one learned to do it, that distinguished one's life. Perhaps she could be famous for every-day homely things and have a real genius for something so simple that nobody else had thought of it. ”