The Naturalist's Summer-Evening Walk

        ... equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
        Ingenium.                           Virgil

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 time 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 dark'ning 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 your hid retreat

When the frost rages and the tempests beat;

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 facing landscape sinks in night;

To hear the drowsy dor* come brushing by             [beetle]

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 pois'd upon his wings,

Unseen, the soft enamour'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 the 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 smoking through the trees.

The chilling night-dews fall:--away, retire;

For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!

Thus, e'er 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.

Gilbert White