290 The Poets Beasts. 



Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth 

 Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent 

 To give such act and utterance as they may 

 To ecstacy too big to be suppressed." 



The herds " screened from the sun and from molesting 

 bite of vexing flies, peaceful enjoy the cool and fragrant 

 meal," and so on to evening, when " the horned cattle will 

 forget to feed, and come home lowing from the grassy 

 mead." We hear them "rub the pasture's creaking gate," 

 and see them, in the yard, "their rustling feast enjoy, 

 and snatch sweet mouthfuls from the passing boy." If the 

 weather be stormy, we see them in the morning " on the 

 scowling heavens cast a despairing eye," at noon " gaze 

 upon the gloom, and, seemly, dread the threatened storm 

 to come," " with broadened nostril to the sky upturned, 

 the conscious heifer sniffs the stormy gale." 



In poetry, therefore, the cow is regularly recurrent as a 

 feature of the passing day or changing year ; indeed, if we 

 except the birds as a class, no other image is such a 

 favourite with the bards as the herd. Whether they speak 

 of them collectively as " soft beavies," and " patient kine," 

 or, individually, as the "lordly stiff-necked bull," "the 

 tyrant of the field," — the "milky mother," — "the strong 

 laborious ox with honest front," or "the slow team of steers 

 with down-sunk forehead and depending tongue," — "the 

 lowing heifer, loveliest of the herd," — the " stubborn " 

 bullock, or " the sportive calves with lifted tails," we find 

 them extending to the horned things all that sympathetic 

 admiration which is characteristic of the poets when speak- 

 ing of animals that are of direct use to man. 



The bull is a really noble animal when you are not on 

 the same side of the hedge. As Hurdis says — 



^ i^^j^ " 'Tis pleasure to approach, 



, , rr I ' y, tl'C strong fence shiclilcd, view secure 

 marked off l)y tlu x^ , • ., in 



^ = JNature, in the savage bull. 



