SUMMER EVENING WALK. 63 



When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 

 What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ? 

 Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 

 And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's* tale; 

 To hear the clamorous curlew f 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? 

 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 J 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 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 tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ; 



about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th of 

 June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdara, 

 Derham, Scopoli, &c. 



* Vagrant cuckoo ; so called, because, being tied down by no incubation, 

 or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control. 



f Charadrius oedicnemus. 



| Gryllus campestris. 



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

 bang singing in the air. 



