Frond

“ For the first half of our journey we were marching along the bed of a stream, but at length we ascended a narrow defile where mighty rocks towered high above our heads, arched over in places by great forest- trees, or giant ferns. A clear rill leapt from ledge to ledge, where with its glassy surface it mirrored the bright reflection of the ferns as they flung their fronds from the rock to form a frame around the pool. ”

“ Then there are tree-ferns, which are ferns that have trunks like trees, which are sometimes thirty feet high, with fronds growing from their tops, so broad and tall that a number of people could sit underneath them in their cool, deep shade, as if they were a tent. ”

“ Then the trees growing thinner and not so majestic, but the flowers more abundant and the valleys more moist, where the streams trickle down; and here and there are little waterfalls, over which in the spray enormous fronds spread their green lace-work and sparkle with the fine pearly dew which is formed by the spray from the falling water. ”

“ Canada to Georgia and westward, usually on limestone cliffs; with wiry purplish stalks.
Fertile fronds.—Six to twenty inches high, leathery, bluish-green, pale underneath, once, or below twice, pinnate; pinnæ, upper ones long and narrow, lower ones usually with one to four pairs of broadly linear pinnules; sporangia bordering the pinnæ, bright brown at maturity; indusium formed by the reflexed margin of the frond. ”

“ Frondeur, a “Mrs. Candor,” a backbiter, a railer, a scandal-monger; any one who flings stones at another. (French, frondeur, “a slinger,” fronde, “a sling.”)
“And what about Diebitsch?” began another frondeur.—Véra, 200.
52Frondeurs, the malcontents in the Fronde war.
Front de Bœuf (Sir Reginald) , a follower of Prince John of Anjou, and one of the knight’s challengers.—Sir W. Scott, Ivanhoe (time, Richard I.) .
Frontaletto, the name of Sa ́cripant’s horse. The word means “Little head.”—Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516) . ”

“ Are the thoughts and the hearts of His chosen,
As crystals the North Wind hath frozen.
Strong—strong—strong—
Underneath are the arms everlasting;
On them our cares we are casting. [79]
Long—long—long—
Have we sung of the life He doth give us—
His mercy and love shall outlive us. VII. At Last.
Far from its mountain home the fern
Has found a resting-place;
A maiden has begun to learn
To love its winsome face.
But when at night the north winds smite
Against the frosty pane,
The fern is listening with delight
To hear their voice again. ”

“ The wild trees which have taken root in the crannies and chasms of the rock have so intersected and entangled, that one can with difficulty catch a glimpse of the stream, which wheels, flashes, and foams below, as if exulting in the surrounding silence and solitude. ”

“ On a dead, withered branch sits a crow, down-peering askance at the old man; On the marge of the river below romp the nut-brown and merry-voiced children, And the dark waters silently flow, broad and deep, to the plunge of the Ha-ha. ”

“ And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulcher will open, spring's softness will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of hedges, and caroling of birds and singing of liberated streams will call him to kindly resurrection. Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. ”

“ The crows which have been so noisy all day long spread their wings for flight; the palms across the road and the great star-flower tree at my gate are among their bedding places, I know of old. All things travel toward the Silence, and my soul stretches herself at ease, up here in the open spaces of my roof. ”

“ She...
Deep within me springs a fountain,
Leaping upward to the sunlight,
At the sport of little breezes
Rudely scattered.
Dearest, all my veering sorrows
In your warmth are turned to beauty,
And the clear spring of my longing
Sobbing gently,
Ever constant, gay or tearful,
Breaks to dewdrops in the sunshine,
Falling back into my bosom,
Rainbow tinted. ”

“ Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the
load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are
bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. ”

“ For as I lay there I could picture the little river winding in and out among the great trees of the primeval forest, and see it here black as night flowing sluggishly beneath the drooping moss-hung trees, there dancing in the sunshine that rained down from above, and then on and on in amongst the mysterious shades where in all probability the foot of man had never trod. ”

“ All morning I continued to guess the way across a steadily rising world, in the utter silence that makes more impressive the dreariness of these lofty regions, until at noon we panted over a jagged rock-ridge from which all the kingdoms of the earth lay spread out below us, tumbled, broken, and velvety brown as far as the eye could command even in this transparent air. ”

“ All day, muddy roads and straining horses; all day, a long pull up-hill; half the day rain in the wet lovely bush, starring and sparkling the exquisite tree ferns, those fine ladies of the forest; crystal-dropping the thick coat of ferns that tapestries the tall cliffs, shutting in our road. ”

“ THOU STRAINEST THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN FERN
(A Fragment)
Thou strainest through the mountain fern,
A most exiguously thin
⁠Burn.
For all thy foam, for all thy din,
Thee shall the pallid lake inurn,
With well-a-day for Mr. Swin-
⁠Burne! ”

“ When I walk out along the hedgerows in the evening after the mill is shut—or at night, when I take the watchman's place—I shall fancy the flutter of every little bird over its nest, the rustle of every leaf, a movement made by you; tree-shadows will take your shape ”

“ While the wind is whispering only,
Fair across the water borne;
Let us in this silence lonely
Sit beneath the ancient thorn.
Wild the road, and rough and dreary;
Barren all the moorland round;
Rude the couch that rests us weary ”

“ Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness. ”

“ These suddenly uprising springs are not common in our country, and need seeking. Our poets, who borrowed from the classics all their epithets for natural fountains, wrongly applied them to our modest springs welling gently from the bosom of the earth. ”

“ In every wet place the little frogs began to pipe to each other their joy that spring was holding her revel. The heart of the people was not sluggish in its thankfulness to God, for if there were no spring, no seed time, there would be no harvest. ”

“ Upon the boughs; you scarcely marked
The shade they downward flung.
The leaves have dropt off one by one,
As the wind o'er them strayed;
Of all it flung upon the stream
Only remains the shade. ”

“ Wild words of an ancient song,
Undefined, without a name.
'It was spring, and the skylark was singing';
Those words they awakened a spell;
They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing,
Nor absence, nor distance can quell. ”

“ Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, ”

“ Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air of sunshine. ”

“ The broad lay still and placid in the sunlight, and the pairing water-birds swam in and out of its reed-fringed margin, and from one to another of its dense 'ronds,' or islands of reeds.
"There is not a breath of wind," said Frank, wetting his finger, and holding it up, to feel if possible by the increased coldness on one side or another, from which quarter the wind was blowing. ”

“ If, on a morning in spring, we behold the ridges of a fresh-turned ploughed field from their northern side, our eyes, catching only the shadowed slopes of the successive furrows, see an expanse of white, the unmelted remains of the night's hail-storm, or the hoarfrost of the dawn. ”

“ She waded, floated, swam a little, or, erect, roamed leisurely along the alder fringe, exploring the dim green haunts of frog and water-hen, stoat and bécassine—a slim, wet dryad, gliding silently through sun and dappled shadow. ”

“ Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
The river at the time was fallen away,
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;
But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.
I crossed the river and swung round the mountain.
And there I met a man who moved so slow
With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart,
It seemed no harm to stop him altogether.
"What town is this?" I asked.
"This? Lunenburg." ”

“ 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 our woods and ravines the flowers are mostly spring flowers, which die away just as the foliage of the trees is coming out and the shade deepens; while ferns are often dormant at that time, but grow as the shade increases. ”

“ How I curse her, how I bless her for his bliss!
VIII.
There are voices in the roar
Of the breakers on the shore,—
There are whispers in the wash of the sea.
There are echoes in the breeze,
As it murmurs ’neath the trees,
There are faces in the stars for me. ”

“ Pure and bright, a fountain flowing
From the hoof-marks in the sod.
From that hour, the fount unfailing
Gladdens the whole region round,
Strengthening all who drink its waters,
While it soothes them with its sound. ”

“ I romped with dogs, climbed trees after birds' nests, drove the bullocks in the dray, under the instructions of Ben, our bullocky, and always accompanied my father when he went swimming in the clear, mountain, shrub-lined stream which ran deep and lone among the weird gullies, thickly carpeted with maidenhair and numberless other species of ferns. ”

“ Their leafless branches, and the air
Filled with the arrows of the rain,
And heard amid the mist below,
Like voices of distress and pain,
That haunt the thoughts of men insane,
The fateful cawings of the crow. ”

“ Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies. ”

“ The Robins stand as thick today
As flakes of snow stood yesterday —
On fence — and Roof — and Twig!
The Orchis binds her feather on
For her old lover - Don the Sun!
Revisiting the Bog!
Without Commander! Countless! Still! ”

“ There are lovely walks, if you do not object to stiff climbing, and once arrived you find yourself, as it were, lost in the woods, among moss and rocks and overhanging trees with thick fringes of ferns covering their outspread branches. ”

“ So close the windows and not hear the wind, But see all wind-stirred.
A Line-storm Song THE line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me, And be my love in the rain. The birds have less to say for themselves In the wood-world's torn despair Than now these numberless years the elves, Although they are no less there: All song of the woods is crushed like some Wild, easily shattered rose. ”

“ From the river came the sound of ice grinding and churning in the rapids below them.
“This Frank,” muttered a bearded noble from one of the northern passes, “is not as others. There is power in him.” ”

“ If one’s heart could have been at rest how beautiful was the scene around, tree, bush, flower, and rugged mossy stone, where the track wound in and out, now down into the deep ravine, now crossing the little bright rill which sometimes trickled beneath the grass, and again appeared, leaping from rock to rock. Birds everywhere flitting and climbing about the trees, or hanging in places, like flowers of gorgeous hues. ”

“ The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men. ”