Now he rode up the wall, and at the topmost of it turned and
looked aback on the blue country which he had ridden through
stretching many a league below, and tried if he could pick out
Upmeads from amongst the diverse wealth of the summer land:
but Upmeads Water was hidden, and he could see nothing
to be sure of to tell him whereabouts the High House stood;
yet he deemed that he could make out the Debateable Wood and
the hills behind it well enough. Then he turned his horse about,
and had the down-country before him; long lines of hills to wit,
one rising behind the other like the waves of a somewhat quiet sea:
no trees thereon, nor houses that he might see thence:
nought but a green road that went waving up and down before him
greener than the main face of the slopes.

He looked at it all for a minute or two as the south-west wind went past
his ears, and played a strange tune on the innumerable stems of the bents
and the hard-stalked blossoms, to which the bees sang counterpoint.
Then the heart arose within him, and he drew the sword from the scabbard,
and waved it about his head, and shook it toward the south, and cried out,
"Now, welcome world, and be thou blessed from one end to the other,
from the ocean sea to the uttermost mountains!"

A while he held the white steel in his fist, and then sheathed the blade,
and rode down soberly over the turf bridge across the ancient fosse,
and so came on to the green road made many ages before by an ancient people,
and so trotted south along fair and softly.

Little is to be told of his journey through the downs:
as he topped a low hill whereon were seven grave-mounds of the ancient