First thing this morning we went out for hay. The fog was heavy, the newly mown grass drenched and green. Nowhere in the world could have been more beautiful than my tiny patch of earth.

But now the fog has lifted and the heat has moved in. My barn smells of grass; the crickets are screeing, the mourning doves mourning. Corn is in tassel, and cabbages are Leviathans.

A morning like this might transform anyone into a Romantic, but I already was one.

from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part

Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of these deep in my heart

With a pure passion? should I not contemn

All objects, if compared with these? and stem

A tide of suffering, rather than forego

Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm

Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below,

Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?