OF SELBORNE 73 



Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 



And listen to the vagrant * cuckoo's tale ; 



To hear the clamorous f curlew 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, unsubdu'd 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 1 



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 dor 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' awakened churn-owl hung 

 Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While high in air, and pois'd 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 ! 



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

 incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders 

 without control. 



t Charadrias oedicnemas. 



j Gryllas campestris. 



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

 and hang singing in the air. 



55 — c* 



