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WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the May-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ;
Then be the hour to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the darkʼning plain
Belated, 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 's your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat?

Epist. VIII. EPISTLES DESCRIPTIVE, &c.

Whence your return, by such nice instinct led
When Spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ?
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride,
The GOD OF NATURE is your secret guide!
While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day
To yonder bench leaf-shelter'd let us stray,
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the fading landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy dor 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;

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While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;

While high in air and pois'd upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft-enamor'd woodlark sings:
These, NATURE's works, the curious mind employ,
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy :

As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain

Steals o'er each 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 smoaking 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 obscur'd 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.

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THE feather'd game that haunt the hoary plains,
Where ice-bound winter hangs in chrystal chains,
The mimic thunder of the deep-mouth'd gun
By lightning usher❜d and by death outrun,
The spaniel springing on the new-fall'n prey,
The friend attendant and the spirits gay;
These are the scenes which lur'd my earliest days,
And scenes like these continue still to please.

Oft when I've seen the new-fledg'd morn arise, And spread its pinions to the polar skies, Th' expanded air with gelid fragrance fan, Brace the slack nerves and animate the man: Swift from the college, and from cares I flew, (For studious cares solicit something new) From tinkling bells that wake the truant's fears, And letter'd trophies of three thousand years;

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