OF SELBORNE. 123 



Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 

 And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's 7 tale; 

 To hear the clamorous curlew 8 call his mate, 

 Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 

 To see the swallow sweep the darkening 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 deepening 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 9 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 ; 

 While high in air, and poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour'd woodlark 10 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. 



7 Vagrant cuckoo ; so called because, being tied down by no incuba- 

 tion or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without 

 control. 



8 Charadrius CEdicnemus. 



9 Gryllus campestris . 



10 In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and 

 hang singing in the air. 



