BOOK I
How blest my lot, in these sweet fields assign'd Where Peace and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind.
SCOTT, of Amwell, Moral Eclogues (1773)
Happiness
Cricketers on village greens, haymakers in the evening sunshine, small boats that sail before the wind—all these create in me the illusion of Happiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a piece of the old Golden World, were hidden, not (as poets have imagined), in far seas or beyond inaccessible mountains, but here close at hand, if one could find it, in some undiscovered valley. Certain grassy lanes seem to lead between the meadows thither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods.