Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/194

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FERN-LAND

I

Hither, where a woven roof
Keeps the prying sun aloof
From wonderland,
From the fairies underland,—
Hither, where strange grasses grow
With their curling rootlets set
'Twixt the black roots serpentine,
Laurel roots that twist and twine
Toward the cloven path below
Of some cloud-born rivulet,—
This way enter
Fern-Land, and from rim to centre
All its secrets shall be thine.


II

Here within the covert see
Fern-Land's mimic forestry;
Royal tree-ferns

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