Rosalind drew from its hiding-place the chart of this world of the imagination which we were given to studying on long winter evenings, and of which only a few copies exist.
These charts are among the few things not to be had for money; if they fall into alien hands they are incomprehensible.

It is true of them, as of the books which describe the Forest of Arden, that they have a kind of second meaning, only to be discerned by those whose eyes detect the deeper things of life.

It is another peculiarity of these charts that while science has indirectly done not a little for their completeness, the work of preparing them has fallen entirely into the hands of the poets; not, of course, the writers of verse alone, but those who have had the vision of the great world as it lies in the imagination, and who have heard that deep and incommunicable music which sings at the heart of it.
Rosalind spread this chart on the table, and we drew our chairs around it, noting now one and now another of the famous places of which all men have heard, but which to most men are mere figments of dreams.
Here, for instance, in a certain latitude plainly marked on the margin, is that calm sweet land of the Phaeacians where reigns Alcinoues the great-souled king, and the white-armed Nausicaae sings after her bath on the river's brink: Without the palace court and near the gate A spacious garden of four acres lay; A hedge inclosed it round, and lofty trees Flourished in generous growth within--the pear And the pomegranate, and the apple tree With its fair fruitage, and the luscious fig, And olive always green.

The fruit they bear Falls not, nor ever fails in winter time Nor summer, but is yielded all the year.
The ever-blowing west wind causes some To swell and some to ripen; pear succeeds To pear; to apple, apple, grape to grape, Fig ripens after fig.
Here, as Rosalind moves her finger, lies the valley of Avalon, whither Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms.

In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells.