| GROUP V | FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE AND SIMILAR; |
When up and clambering all about,
The Traveller's Joy flings forth
Its snowy awns, that in and out
Like feathers strew the earth :
Fair are the tufts of meadow-sweet
That haply blossom nigh;
Fair are the whirls of violet
Prunella shows hard by;
But nor by burn in wood, or vale,
Grows anything so fair
As the plumy crest of emerald pale,
That waves in the wind, and soughs in the gale,
Of the Lady Fern, when the sunbeams turn
To gold her delicate hair."
The other, which I give in full, on account of its quaintness, appeared in the Botanical Looker-out of Edwin Lees:
"When in splendor and beauty all nature is crown'd,
The Fern is seen curling half hid in the ground.
But of all the green brackens that rise by the burn,
Commend me alone to the sweet Lady Fern.
"Polypodium indented stands stiff on the rock.
With his sori exposed to the tempest's rough shock;
On the wide, chilly heath Aquilina stands stern.
Not once to be named with the sweet Lady Fern.
"Filix-mas in a circle lifts up his green fronds
And the Heath Fern delights by the bogs and the ponds;
Through their shadowy tufts though with pleasure I turn,
The palm must still rest with the fair Lady Fern.
"By the fountain I see her just spring into sight.
Her texture as frail as though shivering with fright;
To the water she shrinks — I can scarcely discern
In the deep humid shadows the soft Lady Fern.
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