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stir the imagination in human beings there is nothing comparable with an old tree, especially if it reach down its roots, half-exposed, towards running water. (Observe the tree in No. 1, The Magic Cup; and again the trees in Nos. 23, The Green Dragon, and 4, Goblin Thieves, for different treatments of this theme.) If you remember, it was by such a tree that the youthful dreamer in Gray’s Elegy fed his wayward fancies:
There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch
And pore upon the brook that bubbles by.
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch
And pore upon the brook that bubbles by.
As it was by such a tree (an oak, this time) that the melancholy Jaques meditated:
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out,
Upon the brook that brawls along the world.
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out,
Upon the brook that brawls along the world.
(I passed that very tree the other day,
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