Greene Ferne Farm quotes

“What be it?” from both listeners at once.

If the Athenians were eager for something new, those that dwell in the fields are ten times more so.

“You knows Mr. Valentine Browne as built the new stables?”

“So be May Fisher; but a’ bean’t such a queen as Mother.

Margaret walks as if the parish belonged to her.

”

“

If a’ did, her would sell un, and buy a new bonnet. These yer wimmen!

”

A single flower in a gloomy room will sometimes light it up as with a glory—the eye instantly rests upon it; a single violet will fill the place with perfume.

She was the violet in that ancient building.

Yet there was nothing extraordinary about her—no marvellous hyacinthine or golden tresses, no burning eye flashing with southern passion. She was simply very near the ideal of a fair young English girl, in the full glow of youth and with all its exquisite bloom.

The larks still sang, the sun still shone, and the clouds came over the hill. Yet there was something more beautiful still in the mantling colour of Margaret’s soft check.

Youth and love⁠—youth and love and May-time!

Cuckoo—cuckoo! from the bird on the elm below the hill.

“For how many thousand years have the lambs been happy in the spring-tide?” thought Geoffrey. “And yet it is said that the world is growing old!

Nature is always young. Earth was never younger than she is today.

Goethe was right there:”

“Aw,” said the ancient, picking up his sticks, and delivering his philosophy of the summum bonum with intense gusto. “

The vinest theng of all be a horn o’ ale and a lardy-cake!

”

Off went Rause at a run, and Tummas clattering after. Thought the listener, “

Was ever the important question put in straighter terms? Woot, or wootn’t? Will you, or won’t you?

”

With his horny stiffened fingers Andrew could count up the houses in the hamlet at the Warren; there was not one that the hearse had not emptied. The hamlet of his youth had passed away.

It is the aged that should see ghosts; there should be a spectre in every chair.

The big black horse that carried him in the mad steeplechase at Millbourne—still talked of by the countryside—and in many a run with the Hunt in the vale, lay eight feet deep in the garden, and a damson-tree had grown over him.

Ever round and round, without haste and without rest, went the massive wheel in the mill—ceaseless as the revolving firmament—to the clack of the noisy hopper and creak of the iron gudgeons, and the flousing splash of the millrace.

Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of Andrew Fisher: does time soften the gnarled stem of the oak?

So he sat by the open window in his beehive chair that summer afternoon drowsily listening to the mill. In the window was the escutcheon of his family in coloured glass, and the name “Fischere” in old-fashioned letters.

Men and women were busy keeping it full, while their children, with naked feet, played in the gutter among the refuse of the dust heap, decayed cabbage, mangy curs, and filth.

The ancient alchemists travailed to transmute the baser metals into gold; in these days whole townships are at work transmuting gold and silver into pewter.

All the iron foundries, patent blasts, and Bessemer processes in the world cannot equal the melting power of the pewter tankard. When honest labour takes its well-earned draught it is one thing, or when friendship shares the glass;

To Jabez the shepherd, on the wagon, it was fine sport to watch the rivalry of the “gennelmen.”

A labouring man thoroughly enjoys seeing the perspiration pouring from the faces of the well-to-do.

He bustled about as fast as he could, and kept the horses moving. By superior muscular force Geoffrey remained ahead. To Valentine it was gall and wormwood.

To May it was a great pleasure to hear him dilate in this way. Near the house they met Augustus, radiant with smiles, and perfectly loaded with the wooden bottles for the men.

“I knows I’m a fool,” said he; “at least I ought to, since I’m told so forty times a day. But a fool must be sometimes right. ’Pend upon it, there’s nothing like ale!”

At Greene Ferne, May found a letter for her which spoilt the day.

“Not quite, I fear,” smiling at her impetuosity, for she was turning Kitty’s head. “You see we should start from a different base, and our straight line might be projected for eternity before it came to your window.”

“Then what’s the use of astronomy?” said Margaret promptly.

“Well—really,”—puzzled to give a direct reply, “the difficulty is the longitude. But tell me, are there any roads crossing the Downs?”

Under him the broad bosom of the earth seemed to breathe instinct with life, bearing him up, and from the azure ether came the wind, filling his chest with the vigour of the young day.

The azure ether⁠—yes, and more than that! Who that has seen it can forget the wondrous beauty of the summer morning’s sky?

It is blue—it is sapphire—it is like the eye of a lovely woman. A rich purple shines through it; no painter ever approached the colour of it, no Titian or other, none from the beginning.

The grey eyes sparkled, and as she raised her hand the sleeve dropped and gave a glimpse of the white polished wrist glowing among the leaves. The excitement, the abandon of the moment, gave another charm to her beauty.

It is where the river ripples that the sunbeams glisten, not on the smooth still flow.

She felt along the boughs for the cluster, for what the eyes may miss the hand will often discover; she let the boughs spring up a little way without quite releasing them, to look a second time underneath before quitting hold.

“It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away,” said a man with a leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith.

Nothing ever happens without a blacksmith being in it.

“Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan’t ee zee?” said the landlord of the inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a shortener of the breath.

“Hush!” said Felix, and thought to himself, “

How terrible it is to be hated even when dead!

We will go over the house,” he added aloud, “and see if anything has been taken.”

“

A man’s made just like a pig inside

,” said Augustus to Valentine, and he proceeded to compare the anatomy to heedless ears. Quite sobered by the shock, Basset was of more use than any of them.