Where the Forest Murmurs: Nature EssaysPub. at the offices of C̀ountry life,́ Limited, by G. Newnes, Limited, 1906 - Natural history - 349 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Aldebaran ancient Apple Arcturus autumn beauty bird blossom blue Boötes boughs bracken breath Bride Bridget called Celtic charm clan cloud constellation corncrake Cuchulain cuckoo curlew dark dawn divine dreams dusk earth eternal familiar FIONA MACLEOD flame flowers foam forest Gael Gaelic glens gorse grass Greek green green woodpecker grey heard heart heaven Heralds Highland hills Hyades incalculable iolair isles Kalevala King lands lapwing legend light look loveliness Lyonesse Midir Milky month moon mountain Murmurs myriad mysterious night nightjar once pale pastures Peace phantom Pikker Pleiades Plover poet quaking-grass rain remote rise rose sea-loch secret seen seven shadow shepherd shores silence snow song sorrow soul Spring stars strange Summer sweet thrush tides to-day Tribe unloosened vast voice wandering waters wave whimbrel wild wilderness wind wings winter woods word yellow
Popular passages
Page 272 - Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Page 225 - To God's eternal house direct the way, A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear Seen in the galaxy, that milky way Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest Powder'd with stars.
Page 296 - And thou dost see them rise, Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set. Alone, in thy cold skies, Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet, Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.
Page 302 - Thy hoofs, unwilling, climb the sphery vault ; Thy red eye trembles with an angry glare, When the hounds follow, and in fierce assault Bay through the fringes of the lion's hair. The stars that once were mortal in their love...
Page 291 - This was, of course, ignorance of what has since been ascertained, and not uninstructedness or mere hearsay. Possibly, too, he had in mind rather that apparent unchanging aloofness from the drowning...
Page 317 - ... a deer above the drowning wave or had sunk like a white seabird passing out of sight, he saw a great and kingly figure standing beside him. So great in stature, so splendid in kingly beauty was the mysterious one who had so silently joined him, that he thought this must be one of the gods. " Do you know me, my son ?
Page 335 - Sol, . . . Sitting here, in an old garden by the sea, it is difficult for me to realise that the swallow has gone on her long flight to the South, that last night I heard countless teal flying overhead, and before dawn this morning the mysterious honk-honk of the wild-geese. A white calm prevails. A sea of faint blue and beaten silver, still molten, still luminous as with yet unsubdued flame, lies motionless beneath an immeasurable dome of a blue as faint, drowned in a universal delicate haze of...
Page 341 - ... Homer to Sappho, from Anacreon to Theocritus, we might yet discern the love of the ancient Greeks for this flower from, let us say, a single surviving phrase such as the anonymous lovely epitaphial prayer-poem in the Anthology : — " May many flowers grow on this newly-built tomb ; not the dried-up Bramble, or the red flower loved by goats ; but Violets and Marjoram, and the Narcissus growing in water; and around thee may all Roses grow.
Page 57 - Who that has watched the ebb and flow of lark-life, resident and immigrant; the troubled winterdays of the field-travellers (as the familiar word " fieldfare " means) and the wandering thrushes ; the vagrant rooks, the barn-haunting hoodie; the yellow-hammer flocks and the tribes of the finch; the ample riverside life, where heron and snipe, mallard and...
Page vii - These hours of beauty have meant so much to me, somewhat in the writing, but much more in the long, incalculable hours and days out of which the writing has risen like the blue smoke out of woods, that I want to share them with others, who may care for the things written of as you and I care for them, and among whom may be a few who, likewise, will be moved to garner from each day of the eternal pageant one hour of unforgettable beauty. FIONA MACLEOD.