106 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



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 dor come brushing by 

 With buzzing wing, or the shrill 1 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 

 Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While high in air, and poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour'd 2 woodlark 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 twinkling 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 ! 3 

 Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky, 

 Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high : 

 True to the signal, by love's meteor led, 

 Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed. 4 



1 Gryllus campestris.[G. W.] 



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

 singing in the air. [G. W.] 



3 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 

 scarabaus. [G. W.] 



4 See the story of Hero and Leander. [G. W.] 



