to George Meredith's "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