92 SUMMER EVENING WALK. 



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- shelter' d, 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 cricket * cry ; 

 To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; 

 To catch the distant falling of the flood ; 

 While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung, 

 Thro' the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While, high in air, and poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour 'd woodlarkf sings : 

 These, Nature's works, the curious mind employ, 

 Inspire a soothing, melancholy joy : 

 As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain 

 Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein ! 



Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine ; 

 The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ; 

 The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze, 

 Or cottage chimney smoking through the trees. 



The chilling night- dews fall : away, retire ; 

 For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire ! J 



* Gryllus campestris. 



f In hot summer nights, woodlarks soar to a prodigious 

 height, and hang singing in the air. 



J The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up 

 the stalk of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal 

 to the male, which is a slender, dusky scarabceus. 



