The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it. Charles Williams
About This Quote

In the above quote, Robert Browning compares all of England to a forest. He was inspired to write this after walking through the woods near his home at Pisa, Italy. He was walking with his son and saw a large oak tree, and said that it reminded him of the oak trees in England. He then pondered that if there were such a vast amount of oak trees in England, then he could imagine how vast the forest would be.

Source: The Figure Of Beatrice: A Study In Dante

Some Similar Quotes
  1. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you,... - Pablo Neruda
  2. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. - Pablo Neruda
  3. We love the things we love for what they are. - Robert Frost
  4. I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhereI go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my... - E.e. Cummings
  5. Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. - Plato
More Quotes By Charles Williams
  1. The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between...
  2. But it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist.
  3. I generally give the title-page a fair chance, " Roger said. "Once can't always judge books merely by the cover.
  4. An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.
  5. . Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?"Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered,...
Related Topics