England of my heart is a great country of hill and valley, moorland and marsh, full of woodlands, meadows, and all manner of flowers, and everywhere set with steadings and dear homesteads, old farms and old churches of grey stone or flint, and peopled by the kindest and quietest people in the world. To the south, the east, and the west it lies in the arms of its own seas, and to the north it is held too by water, the waters, fresh and clear, of the two rivers as famous as lovely, Thames and Severn, of which poets are most wont to sing, as Spenser when he invokes the first: Sweete Themmes runne softly till I end my song; or Dryden when he tells us of the second: The goodly Severn bravely sings The noblest of her British kings, At Caesar's landing what we were, And of the Roman conquest here....
