Edward Thomas wrote this paean to a sultry July day in 1916, less than a year before his death at the battle of Arras.

Many of his poems revelling in the English countryside carry intimations of mortality, but here there is just contentment with sun and water.

JULY

Naught moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake

Their doubles and the shadow of my boat.

The boat itself stirs only when I break

This drowse of heat and solitude afloat

To prove if what I see be bird or mote,

Or learn if yet the shore woods be awake.

Long hours since dawn grew, - spread, - and passed on high

And deep below, - I have watched the cool reeds hung

Over images more cool in imaged sky:

Nothing there was worth thinking of so long;

All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among,

Brims my mind with content thus still to lie.