I 



68 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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 j 

 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 

 Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While high in air, and poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour'df 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 ; 

 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 !| 

 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.§ 



* Gryllus campestrls. 



t In hot summer nights wood-larks scar to a prodigious height, and 

 hang singing in the air. 



X 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 scarabosus. 



§ See the story of Hero and Leander. 



