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Each heart awaits, and hails you as its own;
Each moisten'd brow, that scorns to wear a frown.
The unpeopled dwelling mourns the people strayed,
E'en the domestic laughing dairy-maid

Hies to the field, the general toil to share.
Meanwhile the farmer quits his elbow-chair,
His cool brick floor, his pitcher, and his ease,
And braves the sultry beams, and gladly sees
His gates thrown open, and his team abroad,
The ready group attendant on his word
To turn the swath, the quivering load to rear,
Or ply the busy rake, the land to clear.
Summer's light garb itself now cumbrous grown,
Each his thin doublet in the shade throws down;
Where oft the mastiff skulks with half-shut eye,
And rouses at the stranger passing by;
Whilst unrestrain'd the social converse flows,
And every breast love's powerful impulse knows,
And rival wits with more than rustic grace
Confess the presence of a pretty face.

BLOOMFIELD.

HAYMAKING.

Summer glows warm on the meadows, the speedwell, and goldcups, and daisies,

Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses

Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the

haymakers

Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the mowing,

And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily, from dawn till the

gloaming

Wears its cool star; sweet and welcome to all flaming faces a-field

Besprinkled with labour, and with the pure brew of the malt right

now;

cheery !

GEORGE MEREDITH.

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Our ancestors took advantage of every natural holiday to keep it long and gladly. Rural plays, or as Shakspeare calls them, Whitsun pastorals, succeeded after a little interval, the games of May; and now, in June, a feast exclusively rural and popular took place at the time of sheep-shearing. See the "Winter's Tale; "Drayton's Pastorals," eclogue 9; and his "Polyolbion," song 14, where he tells how

The shepherd king,

Whose flock hath chanced that year the earliest lamb to bring,
In his gay baldric sits at his low grassy board,

With flowers, curds, clouted cream, and country dainties stored;
And whilst the bagpipe plays, each lusty jocund swain

Quaffs syllabubs in cans to all upon the plain,

And to their country girls, whose nosegays they do wear;
Some roundelays do sing; the rest the burthen bear.

The white fleeces of the sheep on these occasions, the brown hue of the shearers, the blue of the sky, the running silver of the waters, the green of the grass, the various colours of the flowers, and the straw-hatted damsels that wear them, make up a delightful picture to the imagination.

Haymaking is more toilsome, and is performed in modern times by less happy labourers, who chiefly come over from Ireland for that purpose. But they have at least fine

weather and secure pay. The ladies may practise haymaking on a small scale upon lawns and paddocks; and if they are not afraid of giving their fair skins a still finer tinge of the sunny, nothing makes them look better. Allan Ramsay makes his lover become enamoured of the 'Lass of Patie's Mill,' while helping to make hay :

A tedding of the hay
Bareheaded on the green,
Love 'mid her locks did play,
And wanton'd in her e'en.

Nothing is more lovely than a female head uncovered out of doors. It looks nymph-like and a part of the fertile landscape.

Theocritus has used it with exquisite grace and nature in a passage imitated by Virgil. A goatherd and shepherd are boasting of their popularity with the village lasses:Comatas. There's Clearista, when my goats go by,

Lacon.

Pelts apples, and then hums me something sly.
And Cratis meets and maddens me; her hair
Shakes at her throat in curls, with such an air.

As to a seat against a haycock, on the side farthest from the sun, with the odour of the new-mown grass perfuming all the air, and a sense of slumberous beauty breathing from the warm sky above, and the green earth below- -it is a luxury which has still survived for the lover of the fields; and we accordingly nestle to it in our fancy, and with halfshut eyes rest from our own pleasant work.-LEIGH HUNT.

Spite of the glowing and cloudless midsummer sky beneath which we have reposed with Leigh Hunt in the hay-field, let us suppose the hay carried, and hear in the words of another poet

AN INVOCATION TO RAIN IN SUMMER.

O gentle, gentle, summer rain,
Let not the silver lily pine,
The drooping lily pine in vain

To feel that dewy touch of thine,
To drink thy freshness once again,
O gentle, gentle, summer rain!

MARSH FLOWERS IN JUNE.

In heat the landscape quivering lies;
The cattle pant beneath the tree;
Through parching air and purple skies,
The earth looks up, in vain, for thee;
For thee for thee, it looks in vain,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!

Come, thou, and brim the meadow-streams,
And soften all the hills with mist,
O falling dew! from burning dreams
By thee shall herb and flower be kiss'd,
And earth shall bless thee yet again,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!

W. C. BENNETT.

269

The rains have fallen, the brooks are full, and now we have

MARSH FLOWERS IN JUNE.

Spiked reed, and golden iris bending over
Low-running streams, and that small pleading flower
We none of us forget, with foxgloves ranged
In rows of crimson bells, and many more
From hedge and coppice and flat marshes, make
My glad mind wander forth where they were born,
When the dim dawn awoke with summer songs,
And June with glory crown'd proclaim'd the morn.
With glory crown'd! oh month of wealth untold!
From the high moorland sweeps the scented breeze,
Gorse spreads a golden pavement under heaven;
No stars can pierce the woven forest trees
When night again hath lit her silver lamp,
Brooding above the homes of sleeping men
And wide-spread plains of God, who sleepeth not
Till all the dykes are lustrous once again.

Murmur, slow streams, and sway within the wind,
Spiked reed and golden iris, while the day
Breaks red upon the plain, and the morn grows dim,
And all the piled clouds are roll'd away.

BESSIE PARKES.

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Broad level fields, and hedges thick with trees,
A calm still evening dropping fitful rain,
And hawthorns loaded with their perfumed snow;
All nature languorous, and yet alive

With humming insects and with bleating sheep;

A sky both grey and tender,-misty clouds

Floating therein, streak'd here and there with gold;
And golden flowers topping the tall June grass.

Ivy clothes all the ruins, sprouting weeds,
Lichen, and moss, for richest tapestry;
Which for festivity and regal pomp,
Held in the olden time, is nothing now
But tune of children's voices, and the calm

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