DYER'S POETICAL WORKS.

THE FLEECE:

A POEM. IN FOUR BOOKS.

'Post majores quadrupedes ovilli pecoris secunda ratio est, quæ prima sit, si ad utilitatis magnitudinem referas: nam id præcipue nos contra frigoris violentiam protegit, corporibusque nostris liberaliora præbet velamina.'- Columella.

BOOK I.

THE ARGUMENT.

The subject proposed. Dedicatory address. Of pastures in general fit for sheep: for fine-woolled sheep: for long-woolled sheep. Defects of pastures, and their remedies. Of climates. The moisture of the English climate vindicated. Particular beauties of England. Different kinds of English sheep: the two common sorts of rams described. Different kinds of foreign sheep. The several sorts of food. The distempers arising from thence, and their remedies. Sheep led by instinct to their proper food and physic. Of the shepherd's scrip, and its furniture. Care of sheep in tupping time. Of the castration of lambs, and the folding of sheep. Various precepts relative to changes of weather and seasons. Particular care of new-fallen lambs. The advantages and security of the English shepherd above those in hotter or colder climates; exemplified with respect to Lapland, Italy, Greece, and Arabia. Of sheep-shearing. Song on that occasion. Custom in Wales of sprinkling the rivers with flowers. Sheep-shearing feast and merriments on the banks of the Severn.

THE care of sheep, the labours of the loom,
And arts of trade, I sing. Ye rural nymphs,
Ye swains, and princely merchants, aid the verse.
And ye, high-trusted guardians of our isle,
Whom public voice approves, or lot of birth
To the great charge assigns: ye good, of all
Degrees, all sects, be present to my song.
So may distress, and wretchedness, and want,

The wide felicities of labour learn:

So may the proud attempts of restless Gaul
From our strong borders, like a broken wave,
In empty foam retire. But chiefly thou,
The people's Shepherd,1 eminently placed
Over the numerous swains of every vale,
With well-permitted power and watchful eye,
On each gay field to shed beneficence,
Celestial office! thou protect the song.

On spacious airy downs, and gentle hills,
With grass and thyme o'erspread, and clover wild,
Where smiling Phoebus tempers every breeze,
The fairest flocks rejoice: they, nor of halt,
Hydropic tumours, nor of rot, complain;
Evils deformed and foul: nor with hoarse cough
Disturb the music of the pastoral pipe:

But, crowding to the note, with silence soft

The close woven carpet graze; where nature blends
Flowerets and herbage of minutest size,
Innoxious luxury. Wide airy downs

Are health's gay walks to shepherd and to sheep.
All arid soils, with sand, or chalky flint,
Or shells diluvian mingled; and the turf,
That mantles over rocks of brittle stone,
Be thy regard: and where low-tufted broom,
Or box, or berry'd juniper arise;

Or the tall growth of glossy-rinded beech;
And where the burrowing rabbit turns the dust;
And where the dappled deer delights to bound.
Such are the downs of Banstead, edged with woods,

And towery villas; such Dorcestrian fields,

Whose flocks innumerous whiten all the land:

Such those slow-climbing wilds, that lead the step

1'Shepherd:' the king, namely.

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Insensibly to Dover's windy cliff,

Tremendous height! and such the clover'd lawns
And sunny mounts of beauteous Normanton,1
Health's cheerful haunt, and the selected walk
Of Heathcote's leisure: such the spacious plain
Of Sarum, spread like Ocean's boundless round,
Where solitary Stonehenge, gray with moss,
Ruin of ages, nods: such too the leas
And ruddy tilth, which spiry Ross beholds,
From a green hillock, o'er her lofty elms;
And Lemster's brooky tract, and airy Croft;2
And such Harleian Eyewood's3 swelling turf,
Waved as the billows of a rolling sea:
And Shobden, for its lofty terrace famed,
Which from a mountain's ridge, elate o'er woods
And girt with all Siluria,5 sees around

Regions on regions blended in the clouds.

Pleasant Siluria, land of various views,

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Hills, rivers, woods, and lawns, and purple groves 60
Pomaceous, mingled with the curling growth

Of tendril hops, that flaunt upon their poles,
More airy wild than vines along the sides
Of treacherous Falernum;7 or that hill
Vesuvius, where the bowers of Bacchus rose,
And Herculanean and Pompeian domes.

But if thy prudent care would cultivate
Leicestrian fleeces, what the sinewy arm

Combs through the spiky steel in lengthened flakes; Rich saponaceous loam, that slowly drinks

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1 'Normanton:' a seat of Sir John Heathcote in Rutlandshire.-2 Croft:' a seat of Sir Archer Croft.-3 Eyewood:' of the Earl of Oxford.-Shobden :' of Lord Bateman.-'Siluria:' the part of England which lies west of the Severn, viz., Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, etc.-Pomaceous:' fruitbearing.' 'Treacherous Falernum:' because part of the hills of Falernum was many years ago overturned by an eruption of fire, and is now a high and barren mount of cinders, called Monte Novo.-Saponaceous:' soapy.

The black'ning shower, and fattens with the draught,
Or marl with clay deep-mixed, be then thy choice, 72
Of one consistence, one complexion, spread
Through all thy glebe; where no deceitful veins
Of envious gravel lurk beneath the turf,

To loose the creeping waters from their springs,
Tainting the pasturage: and let thy fields
In slopes descend and mount, that chilling rains
May trickle off, and hasten to the brooks.

Yet some defect in all on earth appears;
All seek for help, all press for social aid.
Too cold the grassy mantle of the marl,
In stormy winter's long and dreary nights,
For cumbent sheep; from broken slumber oft
They rise benumbed, and vainly shift the couch;
Their wasted sides their evil plight declare.
Hence tender in his care, the shepherd swain
Seeks each contrivance. Here it would avail,
At a meet distance from the upland ridge,
To sink a trench, and on the hedge-long bank
Sow frequent sand, with lime and dark manure;
Which to the liquid element will yield
A porous way, a passage to the foe.

Plough not such pastures: deep in spongy grass
The oldest carpet is the warmest lair,

And soundest; in new herbage coughs are heard.
Nor love too frequent shelter: such as decks
The vale of Severn, nature's garden wide,
By the blue steeps of distant Malvern1 walled,
Solemnly vast. The trees of various shade,
Scene behind scene, with fair delusive pomp
Enrich the prospect, but they rob the lawns.
Nor prickly brambles, white with woolly theft,

1 'Malvern :' a high ridge of hills near Worcester.

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Should tuft thy fields. Applaud not the remiss
Dimetians, who along their mossy dales

1

Consume, like grasshoppers, the summer hour;

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While round them stubborn thorns and furze increase,
And creeping briars. I knew a careful swain,
Who gave them to the crackling flames, and spread
Their dust saline upon the deepening grass:
And oft with labour-strengthen'd arm he delved
The draining trench across his verdant slopes,
To intercept the small meandering rills

Of

upper

hamlets: haughty trees, that sour
The shaded grass, that weaken thorn-set mounds,
And harbour villain crows, he rare allowed:
Only a slender tuft of useful ash,

And mingled beech and elm, securely tall,
The little smiling cottage warm embowered;
The little smiling cottage, where at eve
He meets his rosy children at the door,
Prattling their welcomes, and his honest wife,
With good brown cake and bacon slice, intent
To cheer his hunger after labour hard.

Nor only soil, there also must be found
Felicity of clime, and aspect bland,

Where gentle sheep may nourish locks of price.
In vain the silken fleece on windy brows,
And northern slopes of cloud-dividing hills
Is sought, though soft Iberia 2 spreads her lap
Beneath their rugged feet, and names their heights
Biscayan or Segovian. Bothnic realms,3
And dark Norwegian, with their choicest fields,
Dingles, and dells, by lofty fir embowered,
In vain the bleaters court. Alike they shun

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1 'Dimetia: Caermarthenshire in South Wales.-'Iberia:' Spain.Bothnic realms :' Sweden and Finland, from Gulf of Bothnia.