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, Float 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. Here the snake across your path Stretches in his golden bath; Mossy-footed squirrels leap Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep. . . . . . . . Each has business of his own; But should you distrust a tone, Then beware! Shudder all the haunted roods, All the eyeballs under hoods Shroud you in their glare. I am not sure that this imagery can appeal to you as it was intended to appeal to the Western reader, because it partly depends for effect upon the knowledge of the old fairy-tale pictures. In Western ghost stories and fairy stories, goblins and other phantoms are usually represented in long robes with hoods over their faces, and very big, wicked eyes. That is why the poet speaks so often of the hoods and the eyeballs. The meaning is that, in this world, just so soon as you begin to suspect and to be afraid, everything really becomes to you terrible--even as in the old fairy-tales a tree was only a tree to the sight of a brave man, but to the cowardly man its roots became feet and its branches horrible arms and claws, and its crest a goblin face. Then follows a wonderful description of wood life--the life of insect, reptile, bird and little animals--the poet taking care to show how each and all of these represent something of human life and moral truth. But it is one of the most difficult poems in English literature to read; and I shall not try to quote much from it. Enough to say that the same lesson is taught all the way through the poem, the lesson of what Nature means. She must not be thought of as a cruel Sphinx: she is cruel only if you imagine her to be cruel. Nature will always be what you think her to be. Think of her as beautiful and good; then she will be good and beautiful for you. Think of her as cruel; then she will be cruel to you. Do not think of her as pleasure; if you do, she will give you pleasure, but she will destroy you at the same time. She is the spirit and law of Eternal Struggle; and it is thus only that you should think of her, as a divinity desiring you to be brave, active, generous, ambitious. Above all things, you must not hate. Hate Nature, and you are instantly destroyed. You must not allow even a thought of hate to enter your mind.