Therefore I went down the sward that fell from the abrupt edge of the wood, and set out to follow northward along the lower grasses of this single and most unexpected vale.
So strange was the place, even at this first sight, that I thought to myself: "I have happened upon one of those holidays God gives us." For we cannot give ourselves holidays: nor, if we are slaves, can our masters give us holidays, but God only: until at last we lay down the business and leave our work for good and all. And so much for holidays. Anyhow, the valley was a wonder to me there.
It was not as are common and earthly things. There was a peace about it which was not a mere repose, but rather something active which invited and intrigued. The meadows had a summons in them; and all was completely still. I heard no birds from the moment when I left the woodland, but a little brook, not shallow, ran past me for a companion as I went on. It made no murmur, but it slid full and at once mysterious and prosperous, brimming up to the rich field upon either side. I thought there must be chalk beneath it from its way of going. The pasture was not mown yet it was short, but if it had been fed there was no trace of herds anywhere; and indeed the grass was rather more in height than the grass of fed land, though it was not in flower. No wind moved it.
There were no divisions in this little kingdom; there were no walls or fences or hedges: it was all one field, with the woods upon the western slope to my left, and the tilted green of the eastern ridge to my right on which the sunlight softly and continually lay. Never have I found a place so much its own master and so contentedly alone.
If any man owned that Valley, blessed be that man, but if no man owned it, and only God, then I could better understand the benediction which it imposed upon me, a chance wanderer, for something little less than an hour. Here was a place in which thought settled upon itself, and was not concerned with unanswerable things; and here was a place in which memory did not trouble one with the incompletion of recent trial, but rather stretched back to things so very old that all sense of evil had been well purged out of them. The ultimate age of the world which is also its youth, was here securely preserved. I was not so foolish as to attempt a prolongation of this blessedness: these things are not for possession: they are an earnest only of things which we may perhaps possess, but not while the business is on.