The Poets' Flocks. 241 



" Lost hearts, like Iambs drove from their fields by fears, . 

 May back return by chance, bat not by tears. " 



Then comes Summer, when the flies are abroad, and the 

 shearers a-field — " what time the new-shorn flock stand here 

 and there, with huddled head, impatient of the fly." No 

 one who knows the midsummer pastures can have missed 

 noticing how the restless sheep, worried by insects, can 

 hardly venture to stand still to eat a mouthful, but nibble 

 and walk at the same time, and pitied the poor wretches 

 for their uncomfortable feeding ; or how, in despair, they 

 congregate, and, hiding their faces under each other, try to 

 baulk the indefatigable "bot." How carefully they keep 

 their noses down in the grass, even though too fidgety to 

 eat, and then suddenly, when one gives the alarm, how the 

 whole company decamps from one side of the fie'.d to the 

 other. Not that the shepherd can do much for them ; as 

 a rule, he merely leans on the gate, and extends a passive 

 sympathy ; so that Quarles' " Emblem," taken from this 

 pastoral incident, would *em somewhat wide of the fact — 



" Look how the sheep, whose rambling steps do stray 

 From the safe keeping of the shepherd's eye, 

 Eftsoon becomes the unprotected prey 



Of the winged squadron of beleaguering fly. " 



The shearing of the sheep, once an acknowledged rural 

 festival, gives poetry many a charming passage — as " the 

 gambols and wild freaks at shearing-time," when, after the 

 creatures, soused one by one into the pool, had been 

 hurdled up, and the shearer got him ready for his work, the 

 "queen" of the day, with her chosen "shepherd-king," 

 came, with bravery of summer flowers, and bright clothes 

 and rustic music, upon the scene, and, the short day's work 

 over, headed the long evening's revels — 



" The chief, in gracious dignity enthroned, 

 Shines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and lays 



Q 



