The Willows

By Blackwood, Algernon Henry

Book Id: WPLBN0000622108
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.5 MB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	The Willows
Author:	Blackwood, Algernon Henry
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Classic Literature Collection, Blackmask Online Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Blackmask Online


Citation APA MLA Chicago Henry Blackwood, B. A. (n.d.). The Willows. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
Excerpt: Algernon Blackwood AFTER leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapesth, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow?bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in colour as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes. In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle?beds, and willow?grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever?moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their under?side turns to the sun.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: The Willows, 0