Pauldron

“ This is a handsome, fast-growing tree, and one that is particularly valuable for its ample foliage, and distinct and showy flowers. Though perfectly hardy, in other respects it is unfortunate that the season at which the Paulownia flowers is so early that, unless the conditions are unusually favourable, the flower buds get destroyed by the frost. The tree grows to fully 40 feet high in this country, and is a grandly decorative object in its foliage alone, and for which, should the flowers never be produced, it is well worthy of cultivation. ”

“ Read is right in assuming the particular tree in his poem to be a Lombardy poplar. "Silver-green," a remarkable epithet, is more applicable to the abele, or white poplar, than to the fastigiate Lombardy species, and the sound of the trembling of the leaves is less noticeable in the latter than in most of the other poplars. ”

“ To make sure, I looked for his shadow, and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was overhead) , moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt sure that all the long years of rivalry were about to culminate in uncanny battle.
I cried a warning to Paul, and heard a snarl as of a wild beast, and an answering snarl. I saw the dark blotch move swiftly across the court, and a brilliant burst of vari-colored light moving with equal swiftness to meet it; and then shadow and flash came together and there was the sound of unseen blows. ”

“ We pass by long rows of the tall French poplars, their branches cut away all up the trunk, leaving only an odd round tuft at the top of the tree; but little branches are growing all up the trunk now, and the poplars are looking unkempt. It would be the young men who would cut the branches of the poplars. They would cut them for some useful thrifty purpose that I do not know; and then they would cut them because they were always cut that way, as long ago as the times of the old men’s tales about France; but chiefly, I expect, because youth likes to climb difficult trees ”

“ The Lombardy poplar, a variety of the black poplar of Europe, is a familiar tree figure along roadsides, and often marks boundary lines between farms. Each tree is an exclamation point, its branches short and numerous, rising toward the zenith. The roundish leaves that twinkle on these aspiring branches make the tree pretty and interesting when young—just the thing to accent a group of round-headed trees in a park. ”

“ The single poplar behind the house,--Nature is jealous of proud chimneys, and always loves to put a poplar near one, so that it may fling a leaf or two down its black throat every autumn,--the one tall poplar behind the house seemed to nod and whisper to the grave square column, the elms to sway their branches towards it. ”

“ And the oak, in truth, is the tree which bears the most and the prettiest of any that grow wild, and is the strongest of all that are under cultivation; its acorns were the principal diet of the first mortals, and the honey found in it gave them drink.
In this battle it is stated that Castor and Pollux appeared, and, immediately after the battle, were seen at Rome just by the fountain where their temple now stands, with their horses foaming with sweat, and told the news of the victory of the people in the Forum. ”

“ THE POPLARS
O, a lush green English meadow—it's there that I would lie—
A skylark singing overhead, scarce present to the eye,
And a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.
The elm is aspiration and death is in the yew,
And beauty dwells in every tree from Lapland to Peru;
But there's magic in the poplars when the wind goes through.
When the wind goes through the poplars and blows them silver white,
The wonder of the universe is flashed before my sight:
I see immortal visions; I know a god's delight. ”

“ Powell walked past the man. A thin, somewhat sunken face, with a tightly closed mouth, stared at the distant French coast, vague like a suggestion of solid darkness, lying abeam beyond the evening light reflected from the level waters, themselves growing more sombre than the sky; a stare, across which Powell had to pass and did pass with a quick side glance, noting its immovable stillness. ”

“ The light breeze lifts it, and it waves on high
Fruitage and foliage that cannot die.
Help me, dear God, on our Provençal speech,
To soar until the birds' own home I reach!
Once, then, beside the poplar-bordered Rhone,
There lived a basket-weaver and his son,
In a poor hut set round with willow-trees
(For all their humble wares were made from these) ;
And sometimes they from farm to farm would wend,
And horses' cribs and broken baskets mend. ”

“ Few whose eyes are turned upward toward the trees have failed to note that exclamation-point of growth, the Lombardy poplar. Originating in that portion of Europe indicated by its common name, and, indeed, a botanical form of the European black poplar, it is nevertheless widely distributed in America. When it has been properly placed, it introduces truly a note of distinction into the landscape. Towering high in the air, and carrying the eye along its narrowly oval contour to a skyward point, it is lofty and pleasing in a park. ”

“ Here and there the poplar, with its flowerlike leaves, the black gum with its black tracery of downward turning branches, all edged with tender gray green.
It is too beautiful for words, and behind all, accenting and bringing out the light airy beauty, is the dark blue green of the solemn pine forest. ”

“ Thus it came to pass, that none but peaceful bards had ever sat upon the mound. Never a warrior or a common man had risked sitting there. The general fear felt, and the awe inspired by the place, was too great.
But after his adventure of being King of Fairy Land for a whole year, everything else to Powell seemed dull and commonplace. So, to test his own courage, and worthiness of kingship, Powell assembled all his lords at Narberth.
After the night's feasting, revelry and story telling, Powell declared that, next day, he would sit upon the enchanted mound. ”

“ The royal fellow was sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which was a mass of flowers, not bunched together as they would have been with us, but so cunningly arranged that they rose from the footstool to the pinnacle in a rhythm of colour, a poem in bud and petals the like of which for harmonious beauty I could not have imagined possible. And in this fairy den was a thin, gaunt young man, dressed in some sort of black stuff so nondescript that it amounted to little more than a shadow. ”

“ Powell heard (at a certain moment I felt bound to tell him) when he heard that I had known Mrs. Anthony before her marriage, that, to a certain extent, I was her confidant . . . For you can't deny that to a certain extent . . . Well let us say that I had a look in . . . A young girl, you know, is something like a temple. You pass by and wonder what mysterious rites are going on in there, what prayers, what visions? The privileged men, the lover, the husband, who are given the key of the sanctuary do not always know how to use it. ”

“ Pollyooly enjoyed these walks. The duke never tried to improve her mind with botany. But she learned much country lore from him, the names and habits of many birds and small animals. In spite of his exalted station, he was a simple soul; and he had retained his boyish interest in the furred and feathered world of the woods and meadows round the court. Also he enjoyed telling Pollyooly things. ”

“ The old ’Squire was right, for never more was anything seen or heard of Poplar George and the mysterious ‘Pale Eyes.’ They must have been in some unknowable way connected with the lives of those two trees, the cottonwood and the tulip–their lives or spirits maybe, and when they were cut into, their spirits went out with them.
“I knew of a wealthy man who had a cedar tree in his yard, that when he fell ill, the tree became brown, but retained a little life. ”

“ Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" ”

“ Paul. Very well, dear. I call you dear, as we are alone, but later on, before the guests, it must be merely Jeanne. The Comtesse de Céran has done me the honor of asking me to introduce my young wife to her, and of spending a few days here at her château. Mme. de Céran’s circle is one of the three or four most influential in Paris. We are not here to amuse ourselves. I come here merely a Sub-prefect; I am determined to leave a Prefect. Everything depends on her—upon us—upon you!
Jeanne. Upon me? What do you mean?
Paul. Of course, on you! Society judges a man by his wife, and society is right. ”

“ Late as it was, and although twilight had almost given place to the darkness of a fine August night, I was tempted aside into a broad flat meadow, where I walked under a row of tall poplars by the river-side. The castle, church, and town appeared before us in stately harmony, all hues of red roofs and painting having faded away. Two groups of giant poplars rose up, like Grecian temples, from the level between me and the mass of towers and houses. ”

“ The weapon, made of the wood of the Cornel (Cornus mascula) , stuck fast in the ground, took root, grew, threw out leaves and branches, and became a flourishing tree. This prodigy was considered as the happy presage of the power and duration of the infant empire.——According to some accounts, the Cornel, or Cornelian Cherry, is the tree which sprang from the grave of Prince Polydorus, who was assassinated by Polymnestor. The boughs of this tree dropped blood when Æneas, journeying to Italy, attempted to tear them from the tree.——The Greeks consecrated the Cornel to Apollo ”

“ The poplar is pretty only on certain summer evenings when, rising high amid the low shrubbery, it stands against the red rays of the setting sun, shining and trembling, bathed from root to top in uniform yellowish purple—or when, on a clear windy day, it rocks noisily, lisping against the blue sky, and each leaf seems as if eager to tear itself away, to fly and hurry off into the distance. ”

“ Paul and his foal rode on half the afternoon, and then the foal said, "Look back, what can you see?" "I see the eagle again," said Paul, "but now the flame is twice seven fathoms long; he flies very quickly." "Let's turn over again," said the foal, "and I will become a lamb and you will be the shepherd, and if my father ask you if you have seen the travellers say yes, you saw them when the lamb was born." ”

“ This for the white. The black poplar is frequently pollar’d when as big as one’s arm, eight or nine foot from the ground, as they trim them in Italy, for their vines to serpent and twist on, and those they poll, or head every second year, sparing the middle, streight, and thrivingest shoot, and at the third year cut him also. There be yet that condemn the pruning of this poplar, as hindring their growth.
2. The shade of this tree is esteemed very wholsome in Summer, but they do not become walks, or avenues by reason of their suckers, and that they foul the ground at fall of the leaf ”

“ Thus, if the well-known Paulownia imperialis were too tender to stand our winters, and if we were accustomed to see it only in a young and simple-stemmed condition and with large leaves, we should doubtless plant it out every summer as we do the Ferdinanda. There is no occasion whatever to resort to exotic subjects, while we can so easily obtain fine hardy subjects—which, moreover, may be grown by everybody and everywhere. ”

“ Amongst forests of arboraceous ferns, tall as trees, sprung up huge club masses, thicker than the body of a man; and thickets of Equisetaceæ or horse-tail, of prodigious growth, covered the marshes. There flourished the Vlodendron with its strips of cones adorning in vertical rows its carved trunks, its stems covered with leaf-like carvings, passing in elegance the minutest tracery of which we have any conception. ”

“ But if one could go by all the woods, across all the old forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, and could walk a county gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, would not the harvest be a harvest of poplars? A veritable passion for poplars is a most intelligible passion. The eyes do gather them, far and near, on a whole day's journey. Not one is unperceived, even though great timber should be passed, and hill-sides dense and deep with trees. ”

“ Flowers large, in immense panicles; in spring, before the leaves expand. Fruit a dry, ovate, pointed capsule, 11⁄2 in. long, with innumerable flat-winged seeds; hanging on the tree throughout the winter.
P. imperiàlis.
Paulòwnia imperiàlis, (Imperial Paulownia.) Leaves 7 to 14 in. long, sometimes somewhat lobed, usually very hairy beneath; 2 buds, almost hidden under the bark, above each other in the axil. Flowers purple, nearly 2 in. long, with a peculiar, thick, leather-like calyx. A broad flat-headed tree, of rapid growth when young. Cultivated; from Japan ”

“ But destiny, which dogs the steps of princes, was leading him to a catastrophe. The basket was large and growing heavy; but the indefatigable Pollyooly pushed deeper into the marsh. They had crossed several dykes safely; then they came to a plank over a small dyke, nearly dried up. Pollyooly took every possible care to get the expedition across safely. She carried the Lump across and then the basket of mushrooms. Then she turned to watch the passage of the prince. The plank was not more than ten feet long; and it was destiny which chose the exact middle of it for the prince to fall off. ”