82 SUMMER EVENING WALK. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



THE NATURALISTS SUMMER EVENING 

 WALK. 



equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 



Ingenium. VIRG. Georg. 



WHEN day, declining, sheds a milder gleam, 

 What time the May-fly 1 haunts the pool or stream ; 

 When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 

 What tune the timorous hare limps forth to feed. 

 Then he the time to steal adown the vale, 

 And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's 2 tale ; 

 To hear the clamorous curlew 3 call his mate, 

 Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 

 To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning 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 ? 



1 The angler's May-fly, the ephemera vulgata, Linn., comes 

 forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water 

 about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, de- 

 termining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. 

 They usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and 

 continue in succession for near a fortnight. See SWAMMER- 

 DAM, DERHAM, SCOPOLI, &c. 



2 Vagrant cuckoo ; so called, because, being tied down by 

 no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, 

 it wanders without control. 



3 Charadrius oedicnemus. 



