“And she would not hold back his limbs when his heart was
gone to the woods, for it is ever the way of witches with any two things to
care for the more mysterious of the two.”
“A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large
and full of wonders.”
“And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it
can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of
happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of
time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry
to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten
hills.”
“And indeed he had no sooner come to the field than he saw
all the toadstools leaning over one way, and that the way he was going; for
just as thorn trees all lean away from the sea, so toadstools and every plant
that has any touch of mystery, such as foxgloves, mulleins and certain kinds of
orchis, when growing anywhere near it, all lean towards Elfland. By this one
may know before one has heard a murmur of waves, or before one has guessed an
influence of magical things, that one comes, as the case may be, to the sea or
the border of Elfland.”
“Now it is thus with time in Elfland: in the eternal beauty
that dreams in that honied air nothing stirs or fades or dies, nothing seeks
its happiness in movement or change or a new thing, but has its ecstasy in the
perpetual contemplation of all the beauty that has ever been, and which always
glows over those enchanted lawns as intense as when first created by
incantation or song.”
"Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in
our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things
seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June
reflected in water."
