The Holiday

The worlds great ways unclose
Through little wooded hills:
An air that stirs and stills,
Dies sighing where it rose
Or flies to sigh again
In elms, whose stately rows
Receive the summer rain,
And clouds, clouds, clouds go by,
A drifting cavalry,
In squadrons that disperse
And troops that reassemble
And now they pass and now
Their glittering wealth disburse
On tufted grass a-tremble
And lately leafing bough.

Thus through the shining day
We'll love or pass away
Light hours in golden sleep,
With clos'd half-sentient eyes
And lids the light comes through,
As sheep and flowers do
Who no new toils devise,
While shining insects creep
About us where we lie
Beneath a pleasant sky,
In fields no trouble fills,
Whence, as the traveller goes,
The world's great ways unclose
Through little wooded hills.