Nature's Wonder-workers: Being Some Short Life-histories in the Insect World

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Cassell, 1890 - Insects - 284 pages

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Page 285 - Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold. There shall thy wings, rich as an evening-sky, Expand and shut with silent ecstasy! —Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept. And such is man; soon from his cell of clay To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!
Page 192 - Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold, Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold; Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, Their fluid bodies half dissolv'd in light.
Page 192 - While every beam new transient colours flings, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings. Amid the circle, on the gilded mast, Superior by the head, was Ariel...
Page 44 - And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he epake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.
Page 270 - All Nature is but art, unknown to thee All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good: And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Page 91 - Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand Rolls round the Seasons of the changeful year, How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!
Page 182 - Since ghost there is none to affright thee. Let not the dark thee cumber ; What though the moon does slumber? The stars of the night Will lend thee their light, Like tapers clear without number.
Page 84 - Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion ; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience : for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
Page 214 - Scared from the shallows by my passing tread. Dimpling the water glides, with here and there A glossy fly, 'skimming in circlets gay The treacherous surface, while the quick-eyed trout Watches his time to spring...
Page 265 - So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And- these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.

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