The gods themselves are not slow to prefer the forests of earth to heaven, and every grove has its own deity. Long let each grove have its deity! Leave not, O gods, your homes amid the trees.
Dii quoque non dubitant caelo praeponere silvas,
Et sua quisque sibi numina lucus habet.
Et sua quisque diu sibi numina lucus habeto,
Nec vos arborea, dii, precor, ite domo.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sacred Groves
John Milton, Elegy 5.131-134 (tr. Walter MacKellar):