A green thought ...

From Andrew Marvell's poem The Garden ...

Meanwhile the Mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does streight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other Worlds, and other Seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green Thought in a green Shade. 

...not a poem that I could claim to know intimately, and yet when I took this photo of a fairly young silver birch wood south of Toward the last line arrived promptly in my mind without conscious effort.

If you enlarge the photo (I've just looked at it in full screen mode) you can get some idea of the sheer depth of the wood, with the slender trunks marching back through the bracken in their hundreds. The wind is blowing through the tree tops, but where I am standing is warm and calm.

Just the place for a green thought or two ...

And my extra photo is of tonight's sky, still very light at 11.30pm on this, the longest day.