THE FLIES. AN ECLOGUE.
When in the river cows for coolness stand,
And sheep for breezes seek the lofty land,
A youth, whom Æsop taught that every tree,
Each bird and insect, spoke as well as he,
Walk'd calmly musing in a shaded way,
Where flowering hawthorn broke the sunny ray,
And thus instructs his moral pen to draw
A scene that obvious in the field he saw.
Near a low ditch, where shallow waters meet,
Which never learnt to glide with liquid feet,
Whose Naiads never prattle as they play,
But screen'd with hedges slumber out the day,
There stands a slender fern's aspiring shade,
Whose answering branches regularly laid
Put forth their answering boughs, and proudly rise
Three stories upward, in the nether skies.
For shelter here, to shun the noonday heat,
An airy nation of the flies retreat;
Some in soft air their silken pinions ply,
And some from bough to bough delighted fly,
Some rise, and circling light to perch again;
A pleasing murmur hums along the plain.
So, when a stage invites to pageant shows,
