United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By her side a little river glided out from underground with a soft dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. Then, as it ran down the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry.
Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright, There's a golden gleam on the distant height; There's a silver shower on the alders dank. And the drooping willows that wave on the bank. I see the abbey, both turret and tower, It is all astir for the vesper hour; The monks for the chapel are leaving each cell. But Where's Father Philip, should toll the bell?
Hardly is the snow off the ground before the delicate wax-like petals of the blueberry and star-flower, and the great snowy clusters of labrador tea begin to whiten the mossy plains; the birches, willows, and alders burst suddenly into leaf, the river banks grow green with a soft carpet of grass, and the warm still air is filled all day with the trumpet-like cries of wild swans and geese, as they come in great triangular flocks from the sea and pass high overhead toward the far North.
The schoolhouse was on the edge of a wood, close by a brook overhung with birches, alders, and dwarf willows. We of the school who lived at some distance came with our dinners put up in little baskets.
A sparkling draught of crystal weather was poured into our stirrup-cup in the morning, as we set out for a drive of fifteen miles across country to the Riviere a l'Ours, a tributary of the crooked, unnavigable river of Alders. The canoes and luggage were loaded on a couple of charrettes, or two-wheeled carts.
Who has not heard of Calypso? her grove crowned with alders and poplars; her grotto, against which the luxuriant vine laid forth his purple grapes; her ever new delights, crystal fountains, running brooks, meadows flowering with sweet balm- gentle and with violet; blue violets which like veins enamelled the smooth breasts of each fragrant mead!
But at the end of the journey is death. Death for their victims, and for them the judgment!" She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled grass-plot behind her, and at her feet the stream, the smiling valley, the alders, and the little camp. The sky was cloudless, the scene drowsy with the stillness of an August afternoon.
But we must not be talking here or I shall never get a bite. Those fish are a little soiled from jumping about in the dust. You might wash them off at that shallow place, while I go a little further on and try my luck." I went a short distance up the creek, and threw my line into a dark, shadowy pool, under some alders, where there certainly should be fish.
The burro had broken into a ridiculous, little gallop that caused the frying-pan and coffee-pot, lashed on the outside of the pack, to rattle merrily. Splashing through the creek, he disappeared in the dark shadow of a thicket of alders and willows, where the road crosses a tiny rivulet that flows from a spring a hundred yards above.
The men watched him with horror. "He's got crazy, looking at de track," said Big Baptiste, "for that's the way, one is enchanted, he must follow." "He was a good boss," said Jawnny, sadly. As the young fellow disappeared in the alders the men looked at one another with a certain shame. Not a sound except the sough of pines from the neighboring forest was heard.
Word Of The Day