OF SELBORNE. 
83 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE, 
THE 
NATURALIST'S SUMMER EVENING WALK. 
equidem credo, quia sit divinitus ill is 
Ingenium. Virg. George i. 415. 
HEN^ day declining sheds a milder gleam. 
What time the May-fly^ haunts the pool or 
stream ; 
When the still ^wl skim^ 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^ call his mate. 
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 
To see the swallow sweep the darkening 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 ? 
* The angler's May-flj, the Ephemera vulgata. Linn, comes forth 
from its aureh'a state, and emerges out of the water, about six in the 
evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly 
state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about 
the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See 
Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c. — G. W. 
2 Vagrant cuckoo ; so called because, being tied down by no incu- 
bation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wan'\8rs with- 
out control. — G. W. 
^ The stone curlew, CEdicnemus crepitans. — Ed. 
