SUMMER EVENING WALK. 83 



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 dorr come brushing by 

 With buzzing wing, or the shrill 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, 

 Thro' the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While, high in air, and poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour' d woodlark 2 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. 



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. 



2 In hot summer nights, woodlarks soar to a prodigious 

 height, and hang singing in the air. 



8 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 scara- 

 be us. 



4 See the story of Hero and Leander. 

 G2 



