Through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul.

Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!

He ne'er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that -one is sure to get into some mess before evening.

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.