His picture of English Landscape 
Into this essentially English scenery 
the poet introduces a fence of olive-trees 
around the sheep-cote, likewise “a green 
and gilded snake,” together with a 
“hungry lioness” that lies crouching on 
the ground, ready to spring upon a man 
when he awakes from sleep. But these 
productions of other climes were, from the 
dramatist’s point of view, no more out of 
place in his forest, than was the presence 
of a banished duke with his company of 
lords and attendants. He had created an 
ideal landscape out of his own Forest of 
Arden, and he might clothe it with such 
vegetation and people it with such beings 
as he thought that the claims of his art 
allowed. 
Among the first sounds that greet our 
ears after we enter this land of enchant- 
ment are those of an invitation to hear 
the bird-music : 
Under the greenwood tree 
‘Who loves to lie with me, 
5. 
