Adapted from the poem “Invitation the Cast Out Care” by Victorian poet Vita Sackville-West. This poem echoes my own philosophy on the spiritually healing powers of Nature’s wild places.

Lyrics

Come stoop between the hazel leaves
Thrust the chestnut branch aside
The tangle that the woodland weaves
Forgets the waiting world outside

So let this cave of watered green
Cool all your thoughts by care oppressed
And let the sunlight fall between
The leaves and dapple on your breast

Spring green, the youngest green
Chequers all the leafy ride
Shall mesh the lattice of the screen
Where fact and myth for you divide

Seek no ease in spoken words
But in the chapel of the wood
Take wing among the boughs with birds
To find a perfect brotherhood

The bluebells drifting through the trees
A silent brook a long the brook
Shall flow for you as fantasies
Escaped from reason’s record book

The hyacinths between the trees
Shall spread as blue as smoke
Wider than dreams or prophecies
Around the static, rooted oak

Little owl that cries by night
Shall voice your intimate despair
Barking foxes shall invite
Your sorrow to the listening air

Seek no ease in spoken words
But in the chapel of the wood
Take wing among the boughs with birds
To find a perfect brotherhood
credits
from Wild Earth Child, released December 30, 2011
license
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