Explore "An English Wood" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
This valley wood is hedged / With the set shape of things. / Here sorrows come not edged, / Here are no harpies fledged, / No roc has clapped his wings, / No gryphons wave their stings; / Here, poised in quietude / Calm elementals brood / On the set shape of things, / They fend away alarms / From this green wood. / Here nothing is that harms, / No bull with lungs of brass, / No toothed or spiny grass, / No tree whose clutching arms / Drink blood when travellers pass, / No mount of Glass. / No bardic tongues unfold / Satires or charms. / Only the lawns are soft, / The tree-stems, grave and old. / Slow branches sway aloft, / The evening air comes cold, / The sunset scatters gold. / Small grasses toss and bend, / Small pathways idly tend / Towards no certain end.