Read "Passages from the Life of a Fern" by Elizabeth Rundle Charles online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
MY life has been one of such extraordinary vicissitudes as might have / made many almost doubt their own identity. But it is only to-day that / I have learned its real purpose. To-day, for the first time, I am / content. A light has dawned on me which makes all the dark passages / of my former life clear and luminous, and unites the whole into one / harmonious picture. I will narrate a few of my adventures to you while / I am full of this happy discovery.
The first thing I can remember is being in a world overflowing with / life in every form. It was a tropical forest. Gigantic palms rose above / me so high that I could not see their feathery crowns. From one erect / stem to another hung tangled festoons of parasites and climbing plants, / broad, rich, green leaves which fell into stately crowns with their / own weight, enormous gorgeous flowers, delicate wreaths of intertwined / many-coloured blossoms and many-shaped foliage; so that when I looked / up, I could scarcely see one point of the deep blue sky, except when a / strong wind made rifts in my fretted roof. Scarcely one ray of light / fell on me pure, but broken and green and tremulous, softly shaded, or / tinted like a rainbow through the flowers.