





494 COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA. 
When darken’d groves their softest shadows wear, 
And falling waters we distinctly hear ; 
When through the gloom more venerable shows 
Some ancient fabric, awful in repose ; 
Whilst sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal, 
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale; 
When the loos’d horse, now as his pasture leads, 
Comes slowly grazing through th’ adjoining meads, 
Whose stealing pace and lengthen’d shade we fear, 
Till torn up forage in his teeth we hear, 
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food, 
And unmolested kine re-chew their cud ; 
When curlews cry beneath the village-walls, 
And to her struggling brood the partridge calls; 
Their short-liv’d jubilee the creatures keep, 
Which but endures whilst tyrant-man does sleep ; 
When a sedate content the spirit feels, 
And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals ; 
But silent musings urge the mind to seek 
Something, too high for syllables to speak ; 
Till the free soul to a compos’dness charm’d, 
Finding the elements of rage disarm’d, 
O’er all below a solemn quiet grown, 
Joys in th’ inferior world, and thinks it like her own: 
In such a night let me abroad remain, 
Till morning breaks, and all’s confus’d again ; 
Our cares, our toils, our clamors are renew’d, 
Or pleasures, seldom reach’d, again pursu’d. 
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rT 



