Oceans Rush...

I remembered that there was an evocative phrase in an sf novel by Poul Anderson, something about the moon's path or the moon's course. I had quoted the phrase or the passage containing the phrase on this blog but could not find it by searching the blog for "moon's path" etc. It was in an sf novel about far future faster than light interstellar travel although the passage itself referred to this Earth. My mistake was in thinking that the passage had come in a prologue or introductory chapter. On reflection, I remembered that it was the concluding chapter of World Without Stars that was set on Earth. This chapter begins:

"Earth is a quiet world.

"Oh, yes, wind soughs in the great forests that have come back, now that so few people live there; birds sing, cataracts brawl, the oceans rush on the moon's trail around the globe."

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), XVII, p. 120.

I had been searching through Poul Anderson's works for three words, "the moon's trail." I think that that phrase is extremely evocative. The moon's trail links all the ages of Earth from the far past to this imagined far future. A far future forested Earth is also to be found in The Peregrine, a similar novel except that it is a volume of a future history series whereas World Without Stars is a one-off although set in a fascinating future of antithanatics and instantaneous intergalactic space jumps.

Also to be found on the quiet Earth:

ample enjoyment in starport towns;

educational centres bright with galactic youth;

flourishing arts;

living science and scholarship;

preservation of the old;

traditions;

Earthside property left in the charge of robots for centuries...