Mountains, Valleys, Forests, Music

Prompt 3 4/4

p. 37 from the 7 Types of Ambiguity

I began with crossing out, then used an OCR and rearranged.

Mountains, Valleys, Forests, Music

Is meaning possible from these notions?

We are at last in possession of all that might have been

Morning brings hope, light and labour,

evening rest, play and despair

They are the variety of Nature,

Venus, whom one dare not name,

and Mercury, who will bring no news of her

Mountaines, haunts of Pan for lust and Diana for chastity,

to both of these lovers appeal

for banishment; impossibility and impotence,

difficulty and achievement; greatness –

They give you the peace, or the despair, of the grave;

They are the distant things behind which the sun rises and sets,

the too near things which shut in your valley;

deserted wastes, and the ample pastures

to which you drive up cattle for the summer

Vallies hold nymphs, yet are the normal places

are your whole world, your voice can affect the whole of them;

places of shelter and comfort,

places of humility and affliction ;

rich with flowers and warmth,

dark hollows between the hills.

Forests, valuable and accustomed, are desolate and hold danger;

though wild and sterile, there are both nightingales and owls

Their beasts, give the strong pleasures of hunting;

Their burning is useful or destructive

They give freedom for contemplation,

Their trunks are symbols of pride.

Music, at once more and less direct than talking,

may please or distress,

belong to despair and the deaths of swans

It may share living beauty

be an inmate of celestial spheres,

illuminating occasions

on which each Nature is used

if we had understood