84 NATURAL HISTORY 



Such baffled searches mock man's prying pricle, 

 The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide ! 



While deepening shades obscure the face of day 

 To yonder bench leaf-sheltered 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 l cry ; 

 To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; 

 To catch the distant falling of the flood ; 

 While o'er the cliff th' awakened churn-owl hung 

 Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While high in air, and poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamoured woodlark 2 sinks : 

 These, NATURES 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 hastened to his Hero's bed. 4 



1 Gryllus campestris. 



2 In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, aud 

 hang singing in the air. G. W. 



3 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 Scarab&ut. G. W. 



This is still the generally received notion, but the fact is that both 

 sexes of the glow-worm are phosphorescent, not only in the perfect 

 insect, but also in the larva and even pupa state. ED. 



* *&G the story ofllc.ro and Leander. G. \V. 



