And though there be on earth
fens and dense afflictions, he who hath light feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth, as upon well-swept ice.
'worm' was a monster of vast size and power--a veritable dragon or serpent, such as legend attributes to vast
fens or quags where there was illimitable room for expansion.
``If your holy scruples can dispense with using the Jew's tablets, for the pen I can find a remedy,'' said the yeoman; and, bending his bow, he aimed his shaft at a wild-goose which was soaring over their heads, the advanced-guard of a phalanx of his tribe, which were winging their way to the distant and solitary
fens of Holderness.
As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild--the mallard--thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the
fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.
Thus roving on In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast View'd first thir lamentable lot, and found No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous, O're many a Frozen, many a Fierie Alpe, Rocks, Caves, Lakes,
Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death, A Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, GORGONS and HYDRA'S, and CHIMERA'S dire.
There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the
fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that he would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there.
The country on the whole resembled the better parts of the Cambridgeshire
fens. At night we had some difficulty in finding amidst the swamps, a dry place for our bivouac.
I found at last in an almshouse down in the Lincolnshire
Fens an old soldier who not only was wounded at the Black River, but had actually knelt beside the colonel of the regiment when he died.
The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy
fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage.
We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very pretty village (Ottenho"
fen), and then went into the public room to rest and smoke.
As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed to carry the lists of his day's duties,
fen lightly on the floor.
After pacing backward and forward slowly for some little time, he stopped at the lower extremity of the garden, and, leaning on the
fen ce, looked down listlessly at the smooth flow of the river.