United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Be that as it may, certain it is that the mistletoe, the instrument of Balder's death, has been regularly gathered for the sake of its mystic qualities on Midsummer Eve in Scandinavia, Balder's home. The plant is found commonly growing on pear-trees, oaks, and other trees in thick damp woods throughout the more temperate parts of Sweden.
Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted with peculiar powers against pear-trees.
A curious circumstance about those pear-trees was that they did not begin bearing when they were nine or ten years old, as pear-trees usually do. Year after year passed, until they had stood there twenty-seven years, with never blossom or fruit appearing on them. The old Squire tried various methods of making the trees bear.
Some of us can well remember the window of his son's, the historian's, study, the light from which used every evening to glimmer through the leaves of the pear-trees while "The Conquest of Mexico" was achieving itself under difficulties hardly less formidable than those encountered by Cortes.
Pear-trees thirteen thou gavest me and ten apple-trees and figs two-score, and, as we went, thou didst name the fifty rows of vines thou wouldest give me, whereof each one ripened at divers times, with all manner of clusters on their boughs, when the seasons of Zeus wrought mightily on them from on high.
At last the Easter holidays arrived, Johnnie came home, and forthwith Emily received a letter from Valentine with the long-promised invitation. The cherry orchards were in blossom, the pear-trees were nearly out; he wanted his sister and John Mortimer to come, and bring the whole tribe of children, and make a long stay with him.
That isn't all the house really, but it's all that one notices nine windows as you look up from the front garden. Then there's a very big wych-elm to the left as you look up leaning a little over the house, and standing on the boundary between the garden and meadow. I quite love that tree already. Also ordinary elms, oaks no nastier than ordinary oaks pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine.
"Well, I guessed it, sir, and I said it was someone after the fruit; and I asked Phil if he'd come with me and watch and see who it was." "And he did?" "Yes, sir; and we went down the garden and couldn't hear or see anything, and we went right to the bottom, and as we were coming back we heard the pear-trees being shaken." "How did you know it was the pear-trees, sir? it was dark."
All the cherry-trees were in full flower; the pear-trees were coming out, and the young thickets in the garden were bending low with lilac-blossom, but Peter was miserable.
The roses bloomed above you sweet emblems of thy purity and rest and there, close by you, were the pear-trees, planted by your hands, around the roots of which you gathered the rods of my reformation; for I was a truant child. You meant it all for my good, no doubt; but to me it was passing through purgatory then, to merit a future good in time. Ah! how well I remember it all of it.
Word Of The Day