There's no way Tolkien was speaking English here

(Thank you dryden!) Copy of what he says from commenter   @dryden0100      dryden0100

"Let me say at once that owing to the casualties in the war and various other things, there were very few people to elect. It's a pity you couldn't be here in the springtime when that tree there wouldn't look sad, but it'd be covered with leaves, you see. It would look old but not sad. And these, with all the limes obviously, however old they are, they're a lovely green in spring. I suppose. I have actually, in some simple-minded form of longing, actually would like to. I should've liked to be be able to make contact with a tree and find out what it feels about things. "I first began to seriously invent languages about when I was 13 or 14. I've never stopped really."