And every cottage, from the plenteous store,
Receives a burden nightly at its door.
Now noon gone by, and four declining hours,
The wearied limbs relax their boasted powers.
Thirst rages strong, the fainting spirits fail,
And ask the sovereign cordial, home-brew'd ale.
Beneath some sheltering heap of yellow corn,
Rest the hoop'd keg and friendly cooling horn,
That mocks alike the goblet's brittle frame,
Its costlier potions, and its nobler name.
Behold the sound oak table's massy frame
Bestride the kitchen floor; the careful dame
And generous host invite their friends around;
For all who clear'd the crop or till'd the ground,
Are guests by right of custom; old and young;
And many a yeoman join'd the merry throng.
Here plenty reigns, and from her boundless hoard,
(Though not one jelly tremble on the board,)
Supplies the feast with all that sense can crave,
With food that made our great forefathers brave;
Ere the cloy'd palate countless flavours tried,
And cooks had Nature's judgment set aside.
With thanks to heaven, and tales of rustic lore,
The mansion echoes when the banquet's o'er.
A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound,
As quick the frothing horn performs its round;
Care's lively foe; that sprightly mirth imparts,
To cheer their bodies and revive their hearts.
Here, fresh and brown, the hazel's produce lies
In tempting heaps, and peals of laughter rise,
And noisy music, with the frequent song,
Unheeded bear the midnight hour along.
Here, once a year, distinction lowers its crest,
The master, servant, and the cheerful guest,
Are equal all; and round the happy ring,
The reapers' eyes exulting glances fling,
And, warm with gratitude, he quits his place,
With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven'd face,
Refills the jug, his honour'd host to tend,
To serve at once the master and the friend;
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale,
His nuts, his wholesome viands, and his ale.
WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the May-fly haunts the pool or stream,
When the lone owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to walk adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To see the swallow sweep the darkening plain,
Industrious to support her infant train;
To mark the swift, in rapid giddy ring,
Dash round the steeple, unsubdu'd of wing.
Amusive birds! say where your close retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When Spring, sweet season, lifts her blooming head.
Such baffled searches mock man's curious pride,
The God of nature is their secret guide.
While deepening shades obscure the face of day,
To yonder bench, leaf-shelter'd, let us stray,
Till blended objects dim the swimming sight,
And all the fading landscape sinks in night.
To hear the drowsy beetle brushing by,
With humming wing, or the shrill cricket cry.
To see the flitting bat glance through the wood;
To list the murmur of the distant flood;
All rural sights, and sounds, and smells combine;
The tinkling sheep-bell and the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze,
And cottage chimney smoking through the trees.
THE shepherds drive their flocks, by many a dog
Compell'd, to where the mazy running brook
Forms a deep pool; this bank, abrupt and high,
And that, fair spreading in a pebbled shore.
Urg'd to the giddy brink, much is the toil,
The clamour much, of men, and boys, and dogs,
Ere the soft fearful people to the flood
Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain
On some, impatient seizing, hurls them in.
Embolden'd then, nor hesitating more,
Fast, fast, they plunge amid the flashing wave,
And, panting, labour toward the farthest shore.
Repeated this, till deep the well washed fleece
Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt
The trout is banish'd by the sordid stream.
Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow
Slow move the harmless race; where, as they spread
Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray,
Inly disturb'd, and wondering what this wild
Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints
The country fill, and, toss'd from rock to rock,
Incessant bleatings run around the hills.
At last, of snowy white, the gather'd flocks
Are in the wattled pen innumerous press'd,
Head above head; and rang'd in lusty rows
The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.
Meantime the joyous task goes on apace:
Some, mingling, stir the melted tar; and some,
Deep on the new-shorn vagrants' heaving side,
To stamp their master's cypher ready stand;
Others the unwilling wether drag along;
And, glorying in his might, the sturdy boy
Holds by the twisted horns the indignant ram.
Behold, where bound, and of its robes bereft
By needy man, that all-depending lord,
How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies!
What softness in its melancholy face,
What dumb, complaining innocence appears
Fear not, ye gentle tribes, 'tis not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you wav'd.
No; 'tis the tender swain's well-guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,
Borrow'd your fleece, to you a cumbrous load,
Will send you bounding to your hills again.
ALAS for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd; where the shapely column stood
Her palaces are dust. In all her streets
The voice of singing, and the sprightly chord,
Are silent, Revelry, and dance, and show,
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause.
The rocks fall headlong and the valleys rise.
The rivers die into offensive pools,
And, charg'd with putrid verdure, breathe a gross
And mortal nuisance into all the air.
What solid was, by transmutation strange,
Grows fluid; and the fixed and rooted earth
Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
insatiable. Immense The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs, And agonies of human and of brute, Multitudes, fugitive on every side, And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene Migrates uplifted; and with all its soil Alighting in far distant fields, finds out A new possessor, and survives the change. Ocean has caught the phrenzy, and upwrought To an enormous and o'erbearing height, Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,
Upridg'd so high and sent on such a charge, Possess'd an inland scene. Where now the throng
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