Linden Tree Quotes

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She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.
Roman Payne
The Greeks had a word, xenia—guest friendship—a command to take care of traveling strangers, to open your door to whoever is out there, because anyone passing by, far from home, might be God. Ovid tells the story of two immortals who came to Earth in disguise to cleanse the sickened world. No one would let them in but one old couple, Baucis and Philemon. And their reward for opening their door to strangers was to live on after death as trees—an oak and a linden—huge and gracious and intertwined. What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer. . . .
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
Coda Perhaps to love is to learn to walk through this world. To learn to be silent like the oak and the linden of the fable. To learn to see. Your glance scattered seeds. It planted a tree. I talk because you shake its leaves.
Octavio Paz
Forty is a most beautiful age for both men and women. Did you know that in mystic thought forty symbolizes the ascent from one level to a higher one and spiritual awakening? When we mourn we mourn for forty days. When a baby is born it takes forty days for him to get ready to start life on earth. And when we are in love we need to wait for forty days to be sure of our feelings. The Flood of Noah lasted forty days, and while the waters destroyed life, they also washed all impurity away and enabled human beings to make a new, fresh start. In Islamic mysticism there are forty degrees between man and God. Likewise, there are four basic stages of consciousness and ten degrees in each, making forty levels in total. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights. Muhammad was forty years old when he received the call to become a prophet. Buddha meditated under a linden tree for forty days. Not to mention the forty rules of Shams. You receive a new mission at forty, a new lease on life! You have reached a most auspicious number. Congratulations! And don’t worry about getting old. There are no wrinkles or gray hair strong enough to defy the power of forty!
Elif Shafak (The Forty Rules of Love)
But beneath it all, there's the Prince of England kissing him under a linden tree in the garden, moonlight in his hair, and Alex's insides feel positively molten, and he wants to throw himself down the presidential stairs.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
It’s the cracks in us that make us who we are, Zus had said, and perhaps he’d been right. When a linden tree broke, it often grew back, stronger and more beautiful in its damaged places. What if the same was true for man?
Kristin Harmel (The Forest of Vanishing Stars)
We can’t just stand here in the rain with our backs to the town,’ said Baucis. ‘I’ll look if you will.’ ‘I love you Philemon, my husband.’ ‘I love you Baucis, my wife.’ They turned and looked down. They were just in time to see the great flood inundating Eumeneia before Philemon was turned into an oak tree and Baucis into a linden. For hundreds of years the two trees stood side by side, symbols of eternal love and humble kindness, their intertwining branches hung with the tokens left by admiring pilgrims.
Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
The scent of linden blossoms hung heavy on the air. Dortchen made a sharp, jerking movement, as if to walk away. But she hesitated, then turned and went down the long, winding path, past the tangle of briar roses and into the secret grove of linden trees. She picked a blossom and held it to her nose, inhaling deeply. Then she sat on the grass, the blossom cupped in her hand, leant her head back against the tree and closed her eyes. All she could hear was the soft sough of the wind in the leaves, and the humming of innumerable bees as they gathered the nectar from the creamy-white flowers.
Kate Forsyth (The Wild Girl)
Revered as God's servants, the bees they lure provide mead and honey for the table and beeswax candles for church services, which is why many churches planted linden trees in their courtyards. The bee-church connection became so strong that once, at the turn of the fifteenth century, the villagers of Mazowsze passed a law condemning honey thieves and hive vandals
Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
Dortchen ducked through a gap in the trees, following a winding path to a small grove of old linden trees, their branches hanging with heavy creamy-white flowers. A hedge of briar roses, with delicate pink-white flowers blooming among the thorns, shielded them from the eyes of anyone walking past. The garden was alive with birdsong. A blackbird looked at her with a cheeky eye, then hopped away to search for worms. The scent of the linden blossoms was intoxicating.
Kate Forsyth (The Wild Girl)
Father has taught me that when something is lost, whether dear or not, giving up the search is sometimes best and often enough the lost article finds its owner.
Cassandra Krivy Hirsch (Under the Linden Tree)
There were no leaves on the linden trees,
Ann Patchett (The Dutch House)
A linden tree lifted its branches above
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
Each leaf on the maples and lindens was sharply outlined, as if chiselled from black stone. Taken as a whole, however, the great mass of trees seemed like a flat black pattern against the bright sky. The world’s beauty had surpassed itself. It was one of those moments when everyone stops to gaze in wonder—not only the idler with time on his hands but also the shift worker on his way home and the traveller half-dead on his feet. At times like this we cease to have distinct perceptions of light, space, silence, rustlings, warmth, sweet smells, the swaying of long grass or leaves—all the millions of ingredients that make up the world’s beauty. What we perceive then is true beauty, and it tells us only one thing: that life is a blessing.
Vasily Grossman (Stalingrad)
A small grove of linden trees grew on the far side of the lake, below the palace. Dortchen made her way there carefully, not wanting to be seen so close to the King's residence. The trees were in full blossom, bees reeling drunkenly from the pale-yellow flowers that hung down in clusters below the heart-shaped leaves. Dortchen harvested what she could reach, breathing the sweet scent deeply, then picked handfuls of the wild roses that grew in a tangled hedge along the path. She would crystallise the petals with sugar when she got home, or make rose water to sell in her father's shop. She plucked some dandelions she found growing wild in a clearing, and then some meadowsweet, and at last reached the ancient old oak tree she knew from her last foray into the royal park. Here she found handfuls of the sparse grey moss, and she hid it deep within her basket, beneath the flowers and herbs and leaves.
Kate Forsyth (The Wild Girl)
boulevards. Revered as God's servants, the bees they lure provide mead and honey for the table and beeswax candles for church services, which is why many churches planted linden trees in their courtyards. The bee-church connection became so strong that once, at the turn of the fifteenth century, the villagers of Mazowsze passed a law condemning honey thieves and hive vandals to death. In
Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
Philemon counselled with old Baucis first; and then discovered to the listening Gods their hearts' desire, ‘We pray you let us have the care of your new temple; and since we have passed so many years in harmony, let us depart this life together— Let the same hour take us both—I would not see the tomb of my dear wife; and let me not be destined to be buried by her hands!’ At once their wishes were fulfilled. So long as life was granted they were known to be the temple's trusted keepers, and when age had enervated them with many years, as they were standing, by some chance, before the sacred steps, and were relating all these things as they had happened, Baucis saw Philemon, her old husband, and he, too, saw Baucis, as their bodies put forth leaves; and while the tops of trees grew over them, above their faces, — they spoke each to each; as long as they could speak they said, ‘Farewell, farewell, my own’—and while they said farewell; new leaves and branches covered both at once.
Ovid (Metamorphoses)
At first it had no name. It was the thing itself, the vivid thing. It was his friend. On windy days it danced, demented, waving wild arms, or in the silence of evening drowsed and dreamed, swaying in the blue, goldeny air. Even at night it did not go away. Wrapped in his truckle bed, he could hear it stirring darkly outside in the dark, all the long night long. There were others, nearer to him, more vivid still than this, that came and went, talking, but they were wholly familiar, almost a part of himself, while it, steadfast and aloof, belonged to the mysterious outside, to the wind and the weather and the goldeny blue air. It was a part of the world, and yet it was his friend. Look, Nicolas, look! See the big tree! Tree. That was its name. And also: the linden. They were nice words. He had known them a long time before he knew what they meant. They did not mean themselves, they were nothing in themselves, they meant the dancing singing thing outside. In wind, in silence, at night, in the changing air, it changed and yet it was changelessly the tree, the linden tree. That was strange. The wind blew on the day that he left, and everything waved and waved. The linden tree waved. Goodbye!
John Banville (Doctor Copernicus (The Revolutions Trilogy, #1; Scientific Tetralogy, #1))
I threw myself upon the ground, and wept: I then sprang up, and ran out upon the terrace, and saw, under the shade of the linden-trees, her white dress disappearing near the garden-gate. I stretched out my arms, and she vanished.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying. There are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no reckless buccaneers are sailing them, and no corvettes are chasing them, no cannon smoke drifts low over the waves. There is nothing, and there never was! There is only a stunted linden tree out there, and iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it...And ice melting in the bowl, and someone's bovine bloodshot eyes at the next table, and fear, fear...Oh, gods, gods, poison, give me poison!... (67)
Mikhail Bulgakov
Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace. The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer; my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning — and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me. At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I would rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at. So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light. Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variations which I’ve named Prometheus, after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back. I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can’t you see that I’m deaf? — I also cannot stop listening.
Rita Dove
Slothrop hears a girl singing. Accompanying herself on a balalaika. One of those sad little Parisian-sounding tunes in 3/4:   Love never goes away, Never completely dies, Always some souvenir Takes us by sad surprise.   You went away from me, One rose was left behind— Pressed in my Book of Hours, That is the rose I find. . . .   Though it’s another year, Though it’s another me, Under the rose is a drying tear, Under my linden tree. . . .   Love never goes away, Not if it’s really true, It can return, by night, by day, Tender and green and new As the leaves from a linden tree, love, that I left with you.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)
This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered. Alex waits on the South Lawn, within view of the linden trees of the Kennedy garden, where they first kissed. Marine One touches down in a cacophony of noise and wind and rotors, and Henry emerges in head-to-toe Burberry looking dramatic and windswept, like a dashing hero here to rip bodices and mend war-torn countries, and Alex has to laugh. "What?" henry shouts over the noise when he sees the look on Alex's face. "My life is cosmic joke and you're not a real person," Alex says, wheezing. "What?" Henry yells again. "I said, you look great, baby!
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
Runach took the book in hand and went to look for that Bruadarian lass, who was likely having a conversation with the flora and fauna of his grandfather's garden... He just hadn't expected her to be singing. It wasn't loud singing, though he could hear it once he'd wandered the garden long enough to catch sight of her, standing beneath a flowering linden tree, holding a blossom in her hand. Runach came to a skidding halt and gaped at her. Very well, so he had ceased to think of her as plain directly after Gobhann, and he had been struggling to come up with a worthy adjective ever since. He supposed he might spend the rest of his life trying, and never manage it. It was difficult to describe a dream. He had to sit down on the first bench he found, because he couldn't stand any longer. He wondered if the day would come where she ceased to surprise him with the things she did. Her song was nothing he had ever heard before, but for some reason it seemed familiar in a way he couldn't divine. It was enough for the moment to simply sit there and watch as she and the tree--and several of the flowers, it had to be said--engaged in an ethereal bit of music making. It was truthfully the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and that was saying something, because the musicians who graced his grandfather's hall were unequalled in any Elvish hall he'd ever visited. And then Runach realized why what she was doing sounded so familiar. She was singing in Fadaire. He grasped for the rapidly disappearing shreds of anything resembling coherent thought, but it was useless. All he could do was sit on that very cold bench and listen to a woman who had hardly set foot past her place of incarceration, sing a song in his mother's native tongue, that would have brought any elf in the vicinity to tears if they had heard it. He knew because it was nigh onto bringing him to that place in spite of his sorry, jaded self.
Lynn Kurland (River of Dreams (Nine Kingdoms, #8))
He knew a narrow deer path that switchbacked through breaks in the rocks and down the ridge. We soon came to flat ground where a few trees populated the foot of the ridge. Sycamores and white oaks, poplars and lindens quickly multiplied around us. Within only a marq or so the trees drew closer and closer together, their roots entangling and branches mingling. The path was fraught with roots that knotted up in strangled bundles until there was no path at all. We were forced to dismount and lead the horses.
Christopher C. Fuchs (The Depths of Redemption (Origins of Candlestone 1))
Now, the linden, it turns out, is a radical tree, as different from an oak as a woman is from a man. It's the bee tree, the tree of peace, whose tonics and teas can cure every kind of tension and anxiety - a tree that cannot mistaken for any other, for alone in all the catalog of a hundred thousand earthly species, its flowers and tiny hard fruit hand down from surfboard bracts whose sole perserve purpose seems to be to state its own singularity. The lindens will come for her, starting with this ambush. But the full adoption will take years.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
After I'd had a chance to think about it for a while I began to understand why I felt this sudden joy when Kakuro was talking about the birch trees. I get the same feeling when anyone talks about trees, any trees: the linden tree in the farmyard, the oak behind the old barn, the stately elms that have all disappeared now, the pine trees along the windswept coasts, etc. There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature . . . [sic] yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for love teaches us how ridiculous we are--vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth--and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we honor this beauty that owes us nothing. Kakuro was talking about birch trees and, forgetting all those psychoanalysts and intelligent people who don't know what to do with their intelligence, I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees.
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
Ancestors To tell the truth, we should not exist. We, not any collective plural, just you and me. Let us use our imaginations to visualize for a moment the circumstances and conditions of the life of our parents, then our grandparents, then great-grandparents, thus further and further back. Even if among them all there happened to be wealthy individuals or men of privilege, the stench and filth in which they lived, as that then was the rule, would have astonished us who use showers and toilets. What was even more certain was among them the presence of starvelings, for whom a piece of dry bread in pre-harvest time meant happiness. Our ancestors died like flies from epidemics, from starvation, from wars, though children swarmed, for every twelve of them only one or two survived. And what strange tribes, what ugly snouts behinds you and me, what bloody rites in honor of gods carved in the trunk of a linden tree! Back to those who are stalking through the undergrowth of a murky primeval forest with chipped stones for their only weapons, in order to split the skulls of their enemies. It would seem as if we had only parents and that's all, but those other pre-pre-predecessors exist, and with them their afflictions, manias, mental illnesses, syphilis, tuberculosis, and whatnot, and how do you know they do not continue on in you? And what was the probability that among the children of your great-great-grandparents the one survived who would beget your ancestor? And what the probability that this would repeat itself in the next generation? Altogether, a very slim chance that we would be born in these skins, as these, not other, individuals, in whom the genes met those of the devil knows what whores and oafs. The very fact that our species survived and even multiplied beyond measure is astonishing, for it had much against it, and the primeval forest full of animals stronger than humans may serve till now as a metaphor for man's precarious situation - let us add viruses, bacteria, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, but also his own works, atomic weapons and the pollution of nature. Our species should have disappeared a long time ago, and it is still alive, incredibly resistant. That you and I happen to be part of it should be enough to give us pause for meditation.
Czesław Miłosz (Road-side Dog)
Guleed passed me the completed IIP on Caroline Linden-Limmer and pointed out a note which registered that she’d been granted a Gender Recognition Certificate when she was eighteen – changing her legal gender from male to female. ‘So . . .’ I started, but was cut off by the vast silence emanating from Stephanopoulos behind us. I looked over at Nightingale, who looked quizzically back, and decided to explain the implications later. Surprisingly, when I did, his reaction was outrage that somebody had to apply to a panel to determine what gender they were – he didn’t say it, but I got the strong impression that he felt such panels were intrinsically un-British. Like eugenics legislation, banning the burka and air conditioning.
Ben Aaronovitch (The Hanging Tree (Rivers of London, #6))
In the history of Russian pessimism, the general decrepitude of the university buildings, the gloomy corridors, the grimy walls, the inadequate light, the dismal look of the stairs, cloakrooms and benches, occupy one of the foremost places in the series of causes predisposing...And here is our garden. It seems to have become neither better nor worse since I was a student. I don’t like it. It would be much smarter if, instead of consumptive lindens, yellow acacias, and sparse trimmed lilacs, there were tall pines and handsome oaks growing here. The student, whose mood is largely created by the surroundings of his place of learning, should see at every step only the lofty, the strong, the graceful...God save him from scrawny trees, broken windows, gray walls, and doors upholstered with torn oilcloth.
Anton Chekhov (Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov)
Reality splits. A ragged hole hangs in the air, that wild wind rushing through it. Another sky gleams dark on the other side, like skin glimpsed through torn cloth, and then the hole is growing, tearing wide and letting that other-sky pour through. The evening gray of New Salem is swallowed by star-splattered night. In that night stands a tower. Ancient, half-eaten by climbing roses and ivy, taller than the Courthouse or College on either side of the square. Dark, gnarled trees surround it, like feral cousins of the lindens in their neat rows, and the sky above it fills with the dark tatter of wings. For a moment the square stands in eerie, brittle silence, mesmerized by the strange stars and circling crows.
Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches)
A strange landscape stared back at her. Delphine gasped and let the tree support her weight as she slowly took in the sight of of the forest drawn tight around the ring of moss surrounding the linden. The trees were skeletal and pale as bone, branches gnarled and twining in complicated knotwork that might have been intentionally woven or might have been the wild striving of trees reaching for the sky. There were no leaves, but a thick hoarfrost of silver coated every branch, every twig, every barren bud. Bracken grew tangled at the roots of the trees; it, too, was layered in sparkling pale beauty. The ground was covered in the same thick silver, which Delphine slowly appreciated was not cold at all, but still as fragile and sharp as frost. No grass grew on the ground, only a thick carpet of the same moss surrounding the tree. The silver didn't pass through the circle, fading to a film near the green encircling the linden tree.
Rowenna Miller (The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill)
The linden tree. It stood unchanged since the first time Papa Horatio had seen it, all those years ago— unchanged, Alaine thought, for perhaps centuries. Always green, always blooming, even in the middle of winter. Now, at the cresting of summer, it almost blended into the deep green of the forest, except for the perfect circle of velvet green surrounding it. That, and the scent. Ebbing like a tide on the gentle breeze that stirred the linden’s leaves, the perfume mingled the ordinary golden florals of linden blooms with strange notes of vanilla and cedar and incense.
Rowenna Miller (The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill)
Monopodial trees Most conifers Beech Holly Ash Prunus family, including cherry Dogwood Sympodial trees Plane Oak Maple Birch Elm Linden Sycamore Willow
Tristan Gooley (How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves (Natural Navigation))
She shielded her eyes with a salute to the afternoon sun. “Right there, where the ground is blackened, just to the left of that cloud, that’s where the Presidential Palace stood.” Rotating in a slow circle, her index finger pressed the past into the empty panorama. The market selling Levi’s two decades before any licensed clothing store. The music college, where some years earlier a prodigy had learned to play the viola by listening to the two-hundred-year history of chamber music lilting through those open windows. She reconstructed the square for Akhmed—her voice raised every edifice from the dust, replanted every linden tree—because that was easier than apology.
Anthony Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena)
Sad wriggling wasp, you have beshit more worms Than there is grass on ground or leaf on linden tree.] The
Melissa Mohr (Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing)
One more word, Destrier, and I’ll finish what began on Market Day and rip your face so far open not even the Spirit will recognize you. If you touch Miss Hawthorn again, by the fucking trees, I’ll end you.” He ran his gaze over Linden’s scars. “Do you understand?
Rachel Gillig (Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2))
I love hearing that. Linden Falls sounds a lot like Westbury.” Maggie leaned back against his chest, and he circled her with his arms, resting his chin on the top of her head. They stood in silence as thin clouds shrouded the moon, painting the trees at the bottom of the slope with a milky wash. Waves of Grace
Barbara Hinske (Waves of Grace (Rosemont Saga, #10))
The Greeks had a word, xenia—guest friendship—a command to take care of traveling strangers, to open your door to whoever is out there, because anyone passing by, far from home, might be God. Ovid tells the story of two immortals who came to Earth in disguise to cleanse the sickened world. No one would let them in but one old couple, Baucis and Philemon. And their reward for opening their door to strangers was to live on after death as trees—an oak and a linden—huge and gracious and intertwined. What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
The bees produce monofloral honey from linden trees.
Sneha Subramanian Kanta (Ghost Tracks)
Kakuro was talking about birch trees and, forgetting all those psychoanalysts and intelligent people who don't know what to do with their intelligence, I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees... After I'd had a chance to think about it for a while I began to understand why I felt this sudden joy when Kakuro was talking about the birch trees. I get the same feeling when anyone talks about trees, any trees: the linden tree in the farmyard, the oak behind the old barn, the stately elms that have all disappeared now, the pine trees along the windswept coasts, etc. There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature . . . yes, that's it: Just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are --vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth-- and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
Love never goes away Never completely dies Always some souvenir Takes us by sad surprise You went away from me, One rose was left behind -- Pressed in my Book of Hours That is the rose I find Though it's another year Though it's another me, Under the rose is a a drying tear, Under my linden tree Love never goes away, Not if it's really true It can return, by night, by day Tender and green and new As the leaves from a linden tree, love, that I left with you
Thomas Pynchon
It's the cracks in us that make us who we are, Zus had said, and perhaps he'd been right. When a linden tree broke, it often grew back, stronger, and more beautiful in its damaged places. What if the same was true for man?
Ktistin Harmel
When you're fifteen, you can't make promises of a return to the before place. Your aging eyes tell a different, truer story. Linden, Palmetto, Evergreen, Decatur, Woodbine- this neighborhood began as a forest. And now the streets were named for the trees that once lived here.
Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn)
Every July in the city was enriched for me by the secret pleasure of smelling the flowers of a large lime (linden) tree for three streets before it came into view. Such markers in an urban landscape are especially precious.
Penny Billington (The Path of Druidry: Walking the Ancient Green Way)
The large courtyard was shaded by a linden tree, and we gathered and dried its leaves and flowers to make tilleul, an infusion commonly consumed after dinner in those parts of France.
Jacques Pépin (The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen)
So again, why are you climbing a tree?” Christine asked as she shielded her eyes from the sun. She and everyone else sat around on blankets watching Kellen help Stevie put her gear on. “I wanted to learn how to do it, and Kellen fixed up this dead tree for me. I want to show off my new skills, too, because Linden made fun of me,” Stevie said and struck a pose. “Be still, I’m trying to connect the climb line to your saddle,” Kellen said, focused on the task. Kenzie climbed onto Trent’s shoulders and made a face. “Uncle Linden says Aunt Stevie’s gonna break her butt.” “Thanks, Linden,” Stevie said and shot him a look. “She won’t.” Kyle laughed. “I’ve never seen so much safety equipment in my life. Kell, you forgot to bubble wrap her butt before you put the saddle on.” “Where’d you get them giant pads from?” Walt asked. “They’re the ones the track team at the school used to use for pole vaulting.” Kellen adjusted the chinstrap on Stevie’s helmet. “This is our exercise tree.” Stevie patted the trunk. “I want iron legs like Kellen’s, so she topped it for me, cut most of the branches off, and put out the pads. See how she spoils me?” “Yeah, she gave you what looks like fifty feet of dead tree,” Kyle said with a grin. “Most people just get flowers.” Trent snorted. “Nothing says love like a fifty-foot stump.” Kellen double-checked her own gear just in case Stevie got into trouble and she had to go up for her. “Okay, babe, don’t go past the fifteen-foot mark, trust your saddle when your legs get tired, pay attention to the depth of your spikes.” She patted Stevie’s cheek and whispered, “Now show them your monkey.
Robin Alexander (Kellen's Moment)
Ancient city is as if dead, Strange's my coming here. Vladimir has raised a black cross Over the river. Noisy elm trees, noisy lindens In the gardens dark, Raised to God, the needle-bearing Stars' bright diamond sparks. Sacrificial and glorious Way, I am ending here, With me is but you, my equal, And my love so dear.
Anna Akhmatova
Julie Peterson sat alone on the faded stone bench shrouded under the shade of the rare Silver Linden tree in the backyard of her parents’ house.
Kelsey MacBride (Free to Love (Inspiration Point, #1))
Today is a very special day for Linden Falls. The dream of this young lady..." he leaned over and looked into Laura's upturned face, "is going to come true. And this dream will save lives and enrich our community." Wishful Tails
Barbara Hinske (Wishful Tails: The Wishing Tree Series Book 15)
An Elven-maid there was of old, A shining star by day: Her mantle white was hemmed with gold, Her shoes of silver-grey. A star was bound upon her brows, A light was on her hair As sun upon the golden boughs In Lórien the fair. Her hair was long, her limbs were white, And fair she was and free; And in the wind she went as light As leaf of linden-tree. Beside the falls of Nimrodel, By water clear and cool, Her voice as falling silver fell Into the shining pool. Where now she wanders none can tell, In sunlight or in shade; For lost of yore was Nimrodel And in the mountains strayed. The elven-ship in haven grey Beneath the mountain-lee Awaited her for many a day Beside the roaring sea. A wind by night in Northern lands Arose, and loud it cried, And drove the ship from elven-strands Across the streaming tide. When dawn came dim the land was lost, The mountains sinking grey Beyond the heaving waves that tossed Their plumes of blinding spray. Amroth beheld the fading shore Now low beyond the swell, And cursed the faithless ship that bore Him far from Nimrodel. Of old he was an Elven-king, A lord of tree and glen, When golden were the boughs in spring In fair Lothlórien. From helm to sea they saw him leap, As arrow from the string, And dive into the water deep, As mew upon the wing. The wind was in his flowing hair, The foam about him shone; Afar they saw him strong and fair Go riding like a swan. But from the West has come no word, And on the Hither Shore No tidings Elven-folk have heard Of Amroth evermore.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))