From Denise Levertov: A Clearing

What lies at the end of enticing country driveways, curving off among trees? Often only a car graveyard, a house-trailer, a trashy bungalow. But this one, for once, brings you through the shade of its green tunnel to a paradise of cedars, of lawns mown but not too closely, of iris, moss, fern, rivers of stone rounded by sea or stream, of a wooden unassertive large-windowed house. The big trees enclose an expanse of sky, trees and sky together protect the clearing. One is sheltered here from the assaultive world as if escaped from it, and yet once arrived, is given (oneself and others being a part of that world) a generous welcome.                                   It's paradise as a paradigm for how to live on earth, how to be private and open quiet and richly eloquent. Everything man-made here was truly made by the hands of those who live here, of those who live with what they have made. It took time, and is growing still because it's alive. It is paradise, and paradise is a kind of poem; it has a poem's characteristics: inspiration; starting with the given; unexpected harmonies; revelations. It's rare among the worlds one finds at the end of enticing driveways.