United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
No one can read the account of their debts, neglect, malversation of funds, in the time of Henry VIII., without seeing that the expensive works necessary to keep fen-lands dry must have suffered, as did everything else belonging to the convents.
The day chanced to be clear, and as far as he could see lay the level of the fen-lands. Here were trees, some straight, others leaning over the water; there were islands of reeds, and yonder the water shimmering on its shallow, winding way, so sluggish as to be almost stagnant. The whole region was alive with sound, the cries of water-fowl, the songs of birds, and the croak of frogs.
Yet he looked simple and placid; his melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life were over for him, and he were waiting for death to come with a friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer night across the fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive fever-mist. Another monument upon the plain is worthy of a visit.
The belief is more general than well-founded that the drainage of the fens retrograded on account of the dissolution of the monasteries. The state of decay into which those institutions had already fallen, and which alone made their dissolution possible, must have extended itself to these fen-lands.
And the forests, dark and lonely, Moved through all their depths of darkness^ Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the waves upon the margin, Rising, rippling on the pebbles, Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the heron, the shuh-shu-gah, From her haunts among the fen-lands, Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
Having swung myself over the stile I passed round the village churchyard, where the moss-grown gravestones stood grim and ghostly in the white light, and out across the meadows down to where the waters of the Nene, rippling on, were touched with silver. The river-path was wide, running by the winding bank away to the fen-lands and beyond.
Word Of The Day