POEMS OF GILBERT WHITE. 
103 
and is usually introduced, as a specimen of the writer’s verse, 
into literary miscellanies. This poem is written in a strain most 
fitting to the subject, and all inspired with the natural peace and 
warmth of its author’s heart. It opens with a very pleasing 
passage, which, after aptly describing the evening habits of 
various creatures, touches on his “ baffled search ” into the 
mystery of the swallow’s 
hid retreat 
When the frost rages and the tempests beat, 
and comes to a conclusion with the praise of God. Then follows 
what may be esteemed the finest portion of all White’s poetical 
works : — 
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 sings : 
These, Nature’s works, the curious mind employ. 
Impart a soothing melancholy joy ; 
As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain 
Steals o’er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein. 
It is needless to point out in detail the beauties of these 
lines. Their poetic feeling and descriptive music must charm 
every reader, while the naturalist will be doubly gratified by 
their trueness to the well-loved and ghostly circumstances of 
night. The last four verses claim special admiration for their 
beautiful expression of a nature-lover’s ecstasy, which is set 
forth in words so lively, so deeply imbued with profound sym- 
pathy, that they awake or create in the reader the sensations 
they describe. If once remembered and repeated by a true 
naturalist in the open night, they will recur to him again and 
again, until they echo ceaselessly in the soul, rousing it to holy 
contemplation. Like the poetry of Wordsworth, they tell us 
how their author had felt “ the presence and the power of great- 
ness,” how, as indeed his whole book shows, he had learnt that 
nature is never a thing of naught to God, but that without the 
Spirit of God it is a thing of naught to man. This, assuredly, 
was the religion of White’s heart ; and this poem is a witness of 
his simple faith. 
The “ Invitation to Selborne” is valuable, apart from its 
local interest, for the proofs it contains of the writer’s love for 
his native place. 
