Now roves the eye;

And posted on this speculative height,

Exults in its command. The sheepfold here
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.
At first, progressive as a stream, they seek
The middle field; but, scattered by degrees,
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.
There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps
The loaded wain; while, lightened of its charge,
The wain that meets it passes swiftly by;

The boorish driver leaning o'er his team
Vociferous, and impatient of delay.

Nor less attractive is the woodland scene,
Diversified with trees of every growth,

Alike, yet various. Here the gray smooth trunks
Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine,

Within the twilight of their distant shades;
There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood
Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs.
No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,
And of a wannish gray; the willow such,

And poplar, that with silver lines its leaf,
And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm;
Of deeper green the elm; and deeper still,
Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak.
Some glossy-leaved, and shining in the sun,
The maple, and the beech of oily nuts
Prolific, and the lime at dewy eve

Diffusing odors: nor unnoted pass

The sycamore, capricious in attire,

Now green, now tawny, and, ere autumn yet

Have changed the woods, in scarlet honors bright.

COWPER.

A JUNE DAY.

WHO has not dreamed a world of bliss,

On a bright, sunny noon like this,
Couched by his native brook's green maze,

With comrade of his boyish days?

While all around them seemed to be

Just as in joyous infancy.

Who has not loved, at such an hour,

Upon that heath, in birchen bower,
Lulled in the poet's dreamy mood,

Its wild and sunny solitude?

A JUNE DAY.

While o'er the waste of purple ling
You marked a sultry glimmering;
Silence herself there seems to sleep,

Wrapped in a slumber long and deep,

Where slowly stray those lonely sheep
Through the tall foxglove's crimson bloom,
And gleaming of the scattered broom.
Love you not, then, to list and hear
The crackling of the gorse-flowers near,
Pouring an orange-scented tide
Of fragrance o'er the desert wide?
To hear the buzzard whimpering shrill
Hovering above you high and still?
The twittering of the bird that dwells
Amongst the heath's delicious bells?
While round your bed, or fern and blade,
Insects in green and gold arrayed,

The sun's gay tribes have lightly strayed;
And sweeter sound their humming wings
Than the proud minstrel's echoing strings.

HOWITT.

85

THE COUNTRY WALK.

THE morning's fair, the lusty sun With ruddy cheek begins to run; And early birds, that wing the skies, Sweetly sing to see him rise.

I am resolved, this charming day, In the open field to stray;

And have no roof above my head,

But that whereon the gods do tread.

A landscape wide salutes my sight,

Of shady vales, and mountains bright;

And azure heavens I behold,

And clouds of silver and of gold.

And now into the fields I go,

Where thousand flaming flowers glow;

And every neighboring hedge I greet,

With honeysuckles smelling sweet.
Now o'er the daisy meads I stray,
And meet with, as I pace my way,

Sweetly shining on the eye,

A rivulet gliding smoothly by;

THE COUNTRY WALK.

Which shows with what an easy tide

The moments of the happy glide.

The sun now shows his noontide blaze, And sheds around me burning rays;

A little onward, and I go

Into the shade that groves bestow;

And on green moss I lay me down,
That o'er the root of oak has grown;
Where all is silent, but some flood
That sweetly murmurs in the wood;
But birds that warble in the sprays,

And charm e'en silence with their lays.

See! yonder hill, uprising steep, Above the river slow and deep:

It looks from hence a pyramid,

Beneath a verdant forest hid;

On whose high top there rises great,

The mighty remnant of a seat,

An old green tower, whose battered brow

Frowns upon the vale below.

Look upon that flowery plain,

How the sheep surround their swain,

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