How strange and dark and still it was, passing out of the sunshine into those shadows, deep and cool as the bottom of the sea! The oak trees stretched their gnarled boughs into the air, and all around them were the lesser trees of the wood-willow, elder, blackthorn, ash, and hazel. The ground beneath was carpeted with moss and grass as thick and soft as velvet, with thick clusters of fern and bluebells round the tree roots, and creepers dangling from every bough. And the wood, like the river, was all alive! Conies tumbled across the patches of light, and flitted in the shadow, like very elves of the woodland; squirrels ran up the gnarled tree trunks; harmless silver snakes glided along the moss; but here and there, swift and ominous, ran a weazel, darting its head this way and that, and fiercely scenting the air, in one eternal glitter and hurry of bloodthirsty emotion. Thrush, blackbird, finch, birds without number, sang overhead; save when the shadow of the wind-hover or the sparrow-hawk passed across the topmost branches, when there was a sudden and respectful silence, to be followed by a precipitate hurry of exultation, as the enemy passed away.
If I had been a moralist, I might have seen in this wood a microcosm of the world, with its abundant happiness, its beauty, and its dark spots of moral ugliness and cruelty. In you, Signor Weazel (who came so near that I touched you with my rod, which you snapped at ferociously, before bolting swiftly into the deep grass), I might have seen the likeness of a certain sleek creature of my own sex and species, who dwells not very far away. Nevertheless, I let you go in peace; which was no mercy to the conies, I suppose.
So I entered the Forest Primaeval—or such it seemed to me, as the blaze of sunshine faded, the boughs thickened, the air became full of dark shadows and ominous silence. My steps were now deep in grass and fern, and the scent of flowers and weeds was thick in my nostrils, but I chose a path where the boughs were thinnest, and quietly pushed through. While thus I rambled, I suppose that I fell, philosopher like, into a dream; at any rate, I seemed to lose all count of time.=
The world, the life of men, dissolved away
Into a sense of dimness,
as some poet sings. I felt primaeval—archetypal so to speak, till a sudden’ shifting of the vegetable kaleidoscope recalled from thoughts of Plato and the Archetype to a cruel consciousness of self.
I was moving slowly on, when I heard the sound of voices quite close to me. I paused, listening, and only just in time, for in another moment I should have been visible to the speakers. Well shrouded in deep foliage, I looked out to discover what sylvan creatures were disporting themselves in that lonely place; and I saw—what shall I say? A nymph and a satyr? a dryad and a goatfooted Faun?
Just beyond me, there was a broad-green road through the woodland, deeply carpeted with soft grass, but marked here and there with the broad track of a wood-waggon; and on the side of this solitary road, on a rude seat fashioned of two oaken stumps and a rough plank, the nymph was sitting. She wore a light dress of some soft material, a straw hat, a country cloak, and gloves of Paris kid—a civilized nymph, as you perceive! To complete her modern appearance, she carried a closed parasol, and a roll which looked like music.
How pretty she looked, with the warm light playing upon her delicate features, and suffusing her form in its delicate drapery; with the semi-transparent branches behind her, and flowers of the woodland at her feet!