84 
NATURAL EISTOBY 
Sucli baffled searches mock man's prying pride, 
The God of Natuee 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 ^ 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^ sinks : 
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 campestris. 
2 In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and 
hang singing in the air. — G. W. 
^ 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 Scarah(BUs. — G. W. 
This is still the generally received notion, but the fact is that both 
fiexes of the glow-worm are phosphorescent, not only in the perfect 
insect, but also in the larva and even pupa state. — Ed. 
«Lpe the story of Hero and Leander. — G. W. 
