Hillock, or furrow, trips his feeble feet:
O guard his meek fweet innocence from all
Th' innum'rous ills, that rush around his life;
Mark the quick kite, with beak and talons prone,
Circling the skies to snatch him from the plain;
Obferve the lurking crows; beware the brake,
There the fly fox the careless minute waits 3
Nor truft thy neighbour's dog, nor earth, nor sky:
Thy bofom to a thousand cares divide.
Eurus oft flings his hail; the tardy fields
Pay not their promis'd food; and oft the dam
O'er her weak twins with empty udder mourns,
Or fails to guard, when the bold bird of prey
Alights, and hops in many turns around,
And tires her alfo turning to her aid
Be nimble, and the weakeft, in thinę arms,
Gently convey to the warm cote, and oft,
Between the lark's note and the nightingale's,
His hungry bleating still with tepid milk :
In this foft office may thy children join,
And charitable habits learn in fport:
Nor yield him to himself, ere vernal airs
E 4
Sprinkle thy little croft with daisy flow'rs:
Nor yet forget him: life has rifing ills:
Various as æther is the paft'ral care:
Through flow experience, by a patient breast,
The whole long leffon gradual is attain'd,
By precept after precept, oft receiv'd
With deep attention: such as NUCEUS fings
To the full vale near Soar's enamour'd brook,
While all is filence: fweet Hinclean swain!
Whom rude obfcurity severely clasps :
The mufe, howe'er, will deck thy fimple cell
With purple violets and primrose flow'rs,
Well-pleas'd thy faithful leffons to repay.
Sheep no extremes can bear: both heat and cold
Spread fores cutaneous; but, more frequent, heat:
The fly-blown vermin, from their woolly neft,
Prefs to the tortur'd fkin, and flesh, and bone,
In littleness and number dreadful foes.
Long rains in miry winter cause the halt;
Rainy luxuriant fummers rot your flock;
And all excefs, ev'n of falubrious food,
? Soar, a river in Leicestershire.
As fure destroys, as famine or the wolf.
Inferior theirs to man's world-roving frame,
Which all extremes in ev'ry zone endures.
With grateful heart, ye British swains, enjoy
Your gentle feafons and indulgent clime.
Lo, in the sprinkling clouds, your bleating hills
Rejoice with herbage, while the horrid rage
Of winter irresistible o'erwhelms
Th' Hyperborean tracts: his arrowy frosts,
That pierce through flinty rocks, the Lappian flies;
And burrows deep beneath the fnowy world;
A drear abode, from rofe-diffufing hours,
That dance before the wheels of radiant day
Far, far remote; where, by the squalid light
Of fœtid oil inflam'd, fea monsters spume,
Or fir-wood, glaring in the weeping vault,
Twice three flow gloomy months, with various ills
Sullen he struggles; fuch the love of life!
His lank and fcanty herds around him press,
As, hunger-ftung, to gritty meal he grinds
The bones of fish, or inward bark of trees,
Their common fuftenance. While ye, O fwains,
Ye, happy at your eafe, behold your sheep
Feed on the open turf, or crowd the tilth,
Where, thick among the greens, with bufy mouths
They scoop white turneps; little care is yours;
Only, at morning hour, to interpose
Dry food of oats, or hay, or brittle straw,
The watry juices of the boffy root
Abforbing or from noxious air to fcreen
Your heavy teeming ewes, with wattled fence
Of furze or copfe-wood, in the lofty field,
Which bleak afcends among the whistling winds,
Or, if your sheep are of Silurian breed,
Nightly to house them dry on fern or ftraw,
Silk'ning their fleeces. Ye, nor rolling hut,
Nor watchful dog, require; where never roar
Of favage tears the air, where careless night
In balmy fleep lies lull'd, and only wakes
To plenteous peace. Alas! o'er warmer zones
Wild terror ftrides: their ftubborn rocks are rent;
Their mountains fink; their yawning caverns flame;
And fiery torrents roll impetuous down,
Proud cities deluging; Pompeian tow'rs,
And Herculanean, and what riotous stood In Syrian valley, where now the Dead Sea 'Mong folitary hills infectious lies.
See the fwift furies, famine, plague, and war,
In frequent thunders rage o'er neighb'ring realms,
And spread their plains with defolation wide:
Yet your mild homefteads, ever-blooming, smile
Among embracing woods; and waft on high
The breath of plenty, from the ruddy tops
Of chimneys, curling o'er the gloomy trees,
In airy azure ringlets, to the sky.
Nor ye by need are urg'd, as Attic fwains,
And Tarentine, with skins to clothe your sheep;
Expenfive toil; howe'er expedient found
In fervid climates, while from Phoebus' beams
They fled to rugged woods and tangling brakes.
But those expensive toils are now no more,
Proud tyranny devours their flocks and herds :
Nor bleat of sheep may now, nor found of pipe,
Sooth the fad plains of once fweet Arcady,
The fhepherds kingdom: dreary folitude
Spreads o'er Hymettus, and the fhaggy vale
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