The Ferns of the Axe and Its Tributaries: Also of Lyme, Charmouth, Uplyme, and Monkton Wyld, with an Account of the Flower Lobelia Urens, Found Wild Near Axminster, and Nowhere Else in Great Britain

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Hamilton, Adams, 1862 - Ferns - 123 pages
 

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Page 55 - For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, But to the earth some special good doth give...
Page 25 - To trace in nature's most minute design The signature and stamp of power divine, Contrivance intricate, expressed with ease, Where unassisted -sight no beauty sees, The shapely limb and lubricated joint, Within the small dimensions of a point, Muscle and nerve miraculously spun, His mighty work, who speaks and it is done, The invisible in things scarce seen revealed, To whom an atom is an ample field; To wonder at a thousand insect forms.
Page 103 - Coal mines are overhung. The roof is covered as with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, enriched with festoons of most graceful foliage, flung in wild irregular profusion over every portion of its surface. The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light ground-work of the rock to which they are attached.
Page 63 - With mazy error under pendent shades Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierced shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers. Thus was this place A happy rural seat of various view...
Page 119 - The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth. Happy who walks with him ! whom what he finds Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, Prompts with remembrance of a present God.
Page 58 - The heath this night must be my bed, The bracken curtain for my head, My lullaby the warder's tread, Far, far, from love and thee, Mary; To-morrow eve, more stilly laid, My couch may be my bloody plaid, My vesper song thy wail, sweet maid! It will not waken me, Mary!
Page 118 - Rules universal nature. Not a flower But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain, \ Of his unrivalled pencil. He inspires Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In grains as countless as the seaside sands, The forms, with which he sprinkles all the earth.
Page 103 - ... before him, little impaired by the lapse of countless ages, and bearing faithful records of extinct systems of vegetation, which began and terminated in times of which these relics are the infallible historians.
Page 28 - O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power Of botanist to number up their tribes : Whether he steals along the lonely dale, In silent search ; or through the forest, rank With what the dull incurious weeds account, Bursts his blind way ; or climbs the mountain-rock, Fired by the nodding verdure of its brow.
Page 61 - From crag to crag the signal flew. Instant, through copse and heath, arose Bonnets and spears and bended bows ; On right, on left, above, below. Sprung...

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