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

 FERN-LAND

I

, 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 174