TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE,
THE NATURALISTS SUMMER-EVENING WALK.
equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium. Virg. Georg.
When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly[1] 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[2] cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous[3] 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, unsubdued 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 fading landscape sinks in night;
- ↑ The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata Linn., comes forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, etc.
- ↑ Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control.
- ↑ Charadrius œdicnemus.
