Foray

“ As when a pair of workmen at Sluck are making a Polish girdle; a girl at the base of the loom smooths and presses the web with her hands, while the weaver throws her from above threads of silver, gold and purple, forming colours and flowers: thus to-day the wind spread all the earth with mist and the sun embroidered it. ”

“ The shades of night were fast approaching, wrapping the grand old forest in a somber gloom, when Imogene awakened to a sense of her lonely situation. As she pondered on her isolated condition, her mind was filled with fear and dreadful forebodings.
The thought, that she was there alone in that gloomy forest, a prey to wild beasts and starvation, almost distracted her. She almost wished that she had not effected her escape, and was about to give vent to her wild grief, when the tread of horses attracted her attention. ”

“ To meet the mountain fair,
I see a bright, unclouded sky,
And moon-beams quiver there.
And tho' the virtuous soul may sink,
With clouds and storms opprest,
It finds at last a peaceful cell,
Where all the weary rest. ”

“ There were Spirits of the water, and the air, and the earth, forest and mountain demons, creatures who dwelt in darkness and in fire, and others who lived in the sunshine, or loved to come out only in the moonlight. ”

“ Now my mind is filled with sorrow,
Wanders though the bog and stubble,
Wanders weary through the brambles,
Roams throughout the dismal forest,
Till my life is filled with darkness,
And my spirit white with anguish. ”

“ Before their eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoary Deep—a dark Illimitable ocean, without bound, Without dimension; where length, breadth, and height, And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. ”

“ The forests came out of the clear shadows of the morning, became distinct, as if they had rushed nearer--to stop short in a great stir of leaves, of nodding boughs, of swaying branches. In the merciless sunshine the whisper of unconscious life grew louder, speaking in an incomprehensible voice round the dumb darkness of that human sorrow. ”

“ It stood in a dusky corner by the dead forge. Not so much light as would certainly guide a hand was allowed to fall upon it; for deeds of darkness, to be successful, must be prepared against darkness. ”

“ I own I had no desire to linger longer in this land: we had continued for so many days among ravines, defiles, and narrow valleys, peering up at the sky from the depths between mountains, that the eye grew eager for a view of heaven, and yearned to behold a more extensive horizon. When the bourne of a journey lies beyond, the desire to linger, even in beautiful scenery, is weak. ”

“ After his day’s hard fight, in the dust and heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he used to take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until the murmur and fragrance of the woods, the cool wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream had purged him from the fevers of his task. ”

“ They float above the wayfarer's head. The gloomy mass of forest disappears. The very vault of heaven itself is lost in the misty darkness, and every visible outline sinks in the chaos of paling light and floating shapelessness. ”

“ I think there are to be many—for us both. The future is so bewildering—like a tangled and endless forest, and very dim to see in.... But sometimes there comes a rift in the foliage—and there is a glimpse of far skies shining. ”

“ But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war—a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. ”

“ As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through the earth’s atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced. ”

“ Life hangs upon a little thread, but what think you of mountains hanging upon a thread? In my fancy I said, ‘If Fate had decreed one of the Sisters to cut that thread while I witnessed the singular spectacle, what convulsions upon the land and sea about us might not have followed!’ But Nature had an admirable way of taking down these rock-giants, hanging between the heavens and the earth. ”

“ Whereof Life held content the useless key,
And great coarse hinges, thick and rough with rust,
Whose sudden voice across a silence must,
I knew, be harsh and horrible to hear,—
A strange door, ugly like a dwarf.—So near
I came I felt upon my feet the chill
Of acid wind creeping across the sill. ”

“ For many long years, they drove their flocks through field and forest and were full of sorrow and longing. When spring had once more broken forth on the earth, one day they both went out with their flocks, and as chance would have it, they drew near each other. ”

“ In this way I look upon the movements of those young men in contrast with the actions of the old fogies. They are lively, energetic, always on hand, by night or by day, to carry expresses or to do anything required of them. ”

“ Very often a great soul, a great thought, hidden in solitude, blooms like the rose in the midst of the forest; it will be sufficient to bring it forth to the light, and put it before the sun, to have it amaze by a thousand bright colours those who gaze upon it! ”

“ In the first place, every mother’s son was tired out by the long stretch they’d had in full marching order; and, secondly, it was that dark—there being no moon—that it would have been wellnigh impossible to find our way through the forest, to say nothing of the chances it would give them thundering swabs of mutineers and niggers to go for us under cover of the darkness. ”

“ Much, no doubt, has been done by the schools with which the Forest is well supplied. Probably, too, it is they who have driven the old superstitions away, and scattered the mental twilight which for so many ages pervaded these leafy solitudes. ”

“ Night-long, dream and reality mingle. You may wake from sleep to find yourself flying through a region where a forest fire has passed, a place of grey pine-trunks, stripped of foliage, occasionally waving a naked bough. ”

“ And the other trees of the forest joined in its happiness and its sorrow, for they, too, loved the Master. And the angel always hovered near.
The Master came one night alone into the forest, and His face was pale with anguish and wet with tears, and He fell upon His knees and prayed. The tree heard Him, and all the forest was still, as if it were standing in the presence of death. And when the morning came, lo! the angel had gone.
[115]
"They are killing me!" ”

“ I saw all these things in the fire, and you can see them also, if you look steadily into the flames at night-time, because then everything is under the spell of faery power. But you must believe very hard indeed, as you look, for the faeries will not let their country be seen by children who doubt that the beautiful land exists. ”

“ It is mournful to remember that we have seen this ploughing continue till the sun has touched the horizon and the night dews have begun to fall. Even then the long-suffering God has followed up his work—ploughing, ploughing, ploughing, ploughing, till darkness ended all. Do I address any aged ones whose lease must soon run out? ”

“ Deeper and deeper grew the shadows in the forest, and at last the darkness was so well down that it was all that he could do with his eyes, accustomed to the task, to mark the footsteps he was leaving behind him. ”

“ Yet, even here, in this enchanting scene, was man admonished, and reminded of mortality: as we passed the margin of the wood, here and there was seen some former giant of the forest, whose head had been bared by time or the thunder blast, painfully, in the midst of nature's prodigal luxuriance, intimating that all things have their period of birth, maturity, and decay. ”

“ Others, through Fairy despite, have wandered about all night on foot, failing to reach their intended destination though quite near it, and perhaps in the morning finding themselves on the top of a distant hill, or in some inaccessible place to which they could never have made their way alone. ”

“ The silence of the deep- ening twilight, and the awful shadow and depth of the forest had their effect on the youth, but he was too brave to succumb, easily, and the thought of the home folks spurred him on. ”

“ On, on, on—on through the heat and the crowd and the dust—on, or they will be trampled down and lost—on, with throbbing brain and tottering limbs—on, till the heart grows sick, and the eyes grow blurred, and a gurgling groan tells those behind they may close up another space. ”

“ The mute procession past her of trees and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in time. ”

“ In these pantheistic sympathies I dimly recall that another sect finds three great mysteries in its esoteric view of the world. The wind whistling through the trees, the river breaking over its rocks, the movements of man and his voice,—or, indeed, his silence,—are the expression of the great mysteries of body, of word, and of thought. ”

“ Over Soplicowo arose the sun, and it already fell on the thatched roofs, and through the chinks stole into the stable; and over the fresh, dark-green, fragrant hay of which the young men had made them a bed there streamed twinkling, golden bands from the openings of the black thatch, like ribbons from a braid of hair; and the sun teased the faces of the sleepers with its morning beams, like a village girl awakening her sweetheart with an ear of wheat. ”

“ In the fairies of the hills and valleys, in the gnomes of the caverns, in the spirits of the elements, we have the attempts of the mind, when the world was young, to give form to the dim outshadowings of something which was then felt to be hidden behind external nature. ”

“ The soil is turned to ignoble uses, broken with the plough and the harrow, and the hills that once tinkled to the laughter of the fairy now smoke from a hundred brazen mouths; or at best stand silent in a melancholy reticence. Each hour brings its own disillusionment, but it seems a pity we have lost our hold upon this pretty faith, which ran against no whim of modern progress. ”

“ When Fate was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,—she gave a nod to Nature,—'twas enough—Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather. ”

“ I never see a forge at night, when seated on the back of my horse, at the bottom of a dark lane, but I somehow or other associate it with the exploits of this extraordinary fellow, with many other extraordinary things, amongst which, as I have hinted before, are particular passages of my own life, one or two of which I shall perhaps relate to the reader. ”

“ We had passed through the foothills and the low spurs of the mountains, and were almost at the top of the main range, when life seemed to go out of everything, leaving the world dead, so suddenly silent the forest became, so stagnant the air. ”

“ Big were the forests, limitless, seeming as vast as infinity itself, resting heavy and still upon a man’s soul. The feeling of last night, the loneliness, the sort of unnamed dread came back upon John Sheldon. ”

“ A chain, so darkly with its growth entwin'd.
This is my hope!—though when the sunset fades,
When forests rock the midnight on their shades,
When tones of wail are in the rising wind,
Across my spirit some faint doubt may sigh ”

“ The frost-fairies, that glided down the blue rays of the winter-moon with their little lanterns that gave much color but no heat, these little creatures could not comfort him, because though he rode so high and was so straight, still he had the heart of a man. ”

“ My master hurries through the forest, looking neither to right nor to left; when he is in trouble he makes a magic with water that burned, and ice put upon a tree; he went against his enemies and the blood feud is atoned. ”

“ From them, scattering like driven game among the broken country over hundreds of miles of forest, plain, bench land and valley lands, no word could come out to the waiting world. None might know the countless triumphs, the unnumbered tragedies--none ever did know. ”

“ It may be imagined with what anxious expectation they awaited the approach of the critical moment, on which so much depended. The stillness of the night and the darkness of the forest must have added to the terrors conjured up by busy fancies. ”

“ Like a prophet he gazes on the sky, where in the clouds there are many signs that the hunter's eye can see; or like an enchanter he talks with the earth, which, though deaf to city-dwellers, whispers into his ear with a multitude of voices. ”

“ What although some sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush, took possession of field or forest. ”