92 NATURAL HISTORY 
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed. 
Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo’s* tale ; 
To hear the clamorous curlewf call his mate, 
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 
To see the swallow sweep the dark’ning plain, 
Belated, to support her infant train ; 
To mark the swift in rapid, giddy ring, 
Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing : 
Amusive birds! say, where your hid retreat, 
When the frost rages and the tempests beat ? 
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, 
When Spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? 
Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride, 
The God of Nature is your secret guide ! 
While deep’ning shades obscure the face of day, 
To yonder bench, leaf-sheltered, let us stray, 
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, 
And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; 
To hear the drowsy dorr come brushing by 
With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricketf cry ; 
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood, 
To catch the distant falling of the flood ; 
While o’er the cliff the awaken’d churn-owl hung, 
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering 
song ; 
from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in 
the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date 
of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to 
appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near 
a fortnight —See SwammerRvam, Deruam, Scopout, &c. 
* Vagrant cuckoo; so called, because, being tied down by no 
incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it 
wanders without control. 
t Charadrius edicnemus. t Gryllus campestris. 
