The Woods of Westermain"--

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves,
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm.
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

But in winter, and in such a noonday of clear sunshine as the
present, when all the naked grace of trunks and hillsides lies open
to eyeshot, the woodland has less of that secrecy and brooding
horror that Meredith found in "Westermain." It has the very breath
of that golden-bathed magic that moved in Shakespeare's tenderest
haunt of comedy. Momently, looking out toward the gray ruin on the
hill (which was once, most likely, the very "sheepcote fenced about
with olive trees" where Aliena dwelt and Ganymede found hose and
doublet give such pleasing freedom to her limbs and her wit) one
expects to hear the merry note of a horn; the moralizing Duke would
come striding thoughtfully through the thicket down by the tiny pool
(or shall we call it a mere?). He would sit under those two knotty
old oaks and begin to pluck the burrs from his jerkin. Then would
come his cheerful tanned followers, carrying the dappled burgher
they had ambushed; and, last, the pensive Jacques (so very like Mr.
Joseph Pennell in bearing and humour) distilling his meridian
melancholy into pentameter paragraphs, like any colyumist. A bonfire
is quickly kindled, and the hiss and fume of venison collops whiff
to us across the blue air. Against that stump--is it a real stump,
or only a painted canvas affair from the property man's
warehouse?--surely that is a demijohn of cider? And we can hear,
presently, that most piercingly tremulous of all songs rising in
rich chorus, with the plenitude of pathos that masculines best
compass after a full meal--

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude--

We hum the air over to ourself, and are stricken with the most
perfect iridescent sorrow. We even ransack our memory to try to
think of someone who has been ungrateful to us, so that we can throw
a little vigorous bitterness into our tone.

Yes, the sunshine that gilds our Salamis thickets