The ever-blowing west wind causes some
To swell and some to ripen; pear succeeds
To pear; to apple, apple, grape to grape,
Fig ripens after fig.

Here, as Rosalind moves her finger, lies the valley of Avalon, whither
Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is
always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives
Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the
castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a
hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir
in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the cup, and the light from
above smites it into sudden glory. We are travelling eastward,
touching here and there those names which belong only to the greatest
poetry, when Rosalind's finger--the index of our wanderings--suddenly
pauses and rests on an island, not large, as it lies amid that silent
sea, but wonderful above all islands to which thought has ever wandered
or where imagination has ever made its home. Under the light of the
lamp, with Rosalind's face bending over it, no island ever slept in a
deeper calm than this little circle of land about which the greatest of
the poets once evoked the most marvellous of tempests. Rosalind's
finger does not move from that magical point, and, peering on the
chart, our eyes suddenly meet, and a single thought is in them all.
Why not postpone Arden for the moment and explore the isle of Miranda's
morning beauty and Prospero's magical wisdom?

"Why not?" says Rosalind, speaking aloud, and instead of answering her
question the Poet and I are wondering why we have never gone before.
Straightway we fall to studying the map more closely; we note the
latitude and longitude; it is but a little way from the mainland where
stretches the green expanse of the Forest of Arden. We might have gone
long ago if we had been a little more adventurous; at least we think we
might at the first blush; but when we talk it over, as we proceed to do
when Rosalind has rolled up the chart and put it in its place, we are
not quite so sure about it. It is one of the singular things about
this kind of journeying that one learns how to travel and where to go
only by personal observation. Before we went to Arden, for instance,
we had no clear knowledge of any of these countries; we had often heard
of them; their names were often on our lips; but they were not real to
us. That happy day when Ar