The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs. Rabindranath Tagore. A WOOD Come into the close shadow of the wood. Here is cool quiet born of solitude, Cool leafy caverns, murmurous as the seas, Lone alleys to the flitting footfalls known Of nymphs that haunt the silences alone; By that sweet sense of slumber that still leaves An air as of some palace walls that seem Arthur Symons. THE PEACE OF THE FOREST He smelt the earth and trees and flowers, the perfume of mown grass, and the bits of open heath-land far away in the heart of the woods. The summer wind stirred very faintly through the leaves. But the great New Forest hardly raised her sweeping skirts of black and purple shadow. Mr. Bittacy, however, knew intimately every detail of that wilderness of trees within. He knew all the purple coombs splashed with yellow waves of gorse; sweet with juniper and myrtle, and gleaming with clear and dark-eyed pools that watched the sky. There hawks hovered, circling hour by hour, and the flicker of the peewit's flight with its melancholy, petulant cry, deepened the sense of stillness. He knew the solitary pines, dwarfed, tufted, vigorous, that sang to every lost wind, travellers like the gipsies who pitched their bush-like tents beneath them; he knew the shaggy ponies, with foals like baby centaurs; the chattering jays, the milky call of cuckoos in the spring, and the boom of the bittern from the lonely marshes. The undergrowth of watching hollies, he knew too, strange and mysterious, with their dark, suggestive beauty, and the yellow shimmer of their pale dropped leaves. Here all the forest lived and breathed in safety, secure from mutilation. No terror of the axe could haunt the peace of its vast subconscious life, no terror of devasting Man afflict it with the dread of premature death. It knew itself supreme; it spread and preened itself without concealment. It set no spires to carry warnings, for no wind brought messages of alarm as it bulged outwards to the sun and stars. But, once its leafy portals left behind, the trees of the countryside were otherwise. The houses threatened them; they knew themselves in danger. The roads were no longer glades of silent turf, but noisy, cruel ways by which men came to attack them. They were civilised, cared for-but cared for in order that some day they might be put to death. Even in the villages, where the solemn and immemorial repose of giant chestnuts aped security, the tossing of a silver birch against their mass, impatient in the littlest wind, brought warning. Dust clogged their leaves. The inner humming of their quiet life became inaudible beneath the scream and shriek of clattering traffic. They longed and prayed to enter the great Peace of the Forest yonder, but they could not move. They knew, moreover, that the Forest with its august, deep splendour despised and pitied them. They were a thing of artificial gardens, and belonged to beds of flowers all forced to grow one way. Algernon Blackwood. THE HOUSE OF THE TREES Ope your doors and take me in, Spirit of the wood, Wash me clean of dust and din, Take me from the noisy light Where at mid-day standeth Night Singing Toil's release. All your dusky twilight stores To my senses give; Take me in and lock the doors, Show me how to live. Lift your leafy roof for me, Part your yielding walls: Let me wander lingeringly Through your scented halls. Ope your doors and take me in, Take me-make me next of kin To your leafy brood. Ethelwyn Wetherald. IN THE WOOD No shrill praise nor thanks confessed Flowers fear not their God will blight Thanks there are in everything Growing down the woodland way, Rendered through developing Fullest life and freest sway. (Let me find how I may be Thankful unobtrusively.) Arthur Upson. |