This poem conjures memories of my childhood years spent in a farmhouse out in the country near Poplar Grove, Illinois. I remember many days spent exploring the outdoors, building forts with the hay bales in the barn, reading in solitude, spending hours just swinging on the tire swing in the front yard . . .  Ah, life.

     Into my heart an air that kills
          From yon far country blows:
     What are those blue remembered hills,
          What spires, what farms are those?

     That is the land of lost content,
          I see it shining plain,
     The happy highways where I went
          And cannot come again.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad