A hundred yards nearly below the water-course was fringed with thick copses of oak, and the gently ascending slopes on the western bank were completely hidden from the Union lines.

One morning the first week in May, about four o'clock, when he was out waiting in the little copse, he sat down for a while on a tree stump, and when he looked up saw a fox coming towards him over the ploughed field.

At last the monarch struck a mighty blow, His foeman's shield of gold, his blade cleft through; And as the lightning swung again his sword, And struck the chieftain's blade upon the sward, A Sedu springs from out the tangled copse, And at his feet the sword still ringing drops.

They were two miles over the green shoulder of a hill, a rattle down a stony, deep-rutted country lane, where the mare stumbled and nearly came down, a jump over a 5ft. brook, a cut through a hazel copse, another dose of heavy ploughland, a couple of gates to open, and then the green, unbroken Downs beyond.

A pheasant, alarmed by the hounds, comes running quietly, thinking to escape into the line of isolated copses that commences here; but, suddenly confronted by the horsemen just outside, rises with an uproar, and goes sailing down over the fields.

Imagine the pleasure of plunging at will into June's leafy copses of hazel and lime, Of scudding through acres of grasses knee-high, and of snuffing the fragrance of clover and thyme.

And sung or whistled in his cheer; The dog that by his master's side, Made the lone copse with echoes ring: The mill that whirling in the tide, Seemed with a droning voice to sing; The lowing herd, the bleating flock, And many a far-off murmuring wheel: Each sent its music up the rock, And woke my bosom's echoing peal.

In moist copses the ferns and osmundas begin to uncurl in April, opening their soft coils of spongy verdure, coated with woolly down, from which the humming-bird steals the lining of her nest.

And a neat little copse by the house all pretty to look at, birch and willowI'll plant a bit more other side of the house when I've time.

What, if the jaded steer, who, all day long, Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, When ev'ning came, and her sweet cooling hour, Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, Where greener herbage wav'd, or clearer streams Invited him to slake his burning thirst?

Squire Filbard and one of his sons were walking round the outlying copses that October day with the object of driving the pheasants in towards the great Filbard wood, rather than of making a bag.

Old Benoit had seen Willan and Victorine going down through the poplar copse toward the pear orchard.

It is not in the waste and howling wilderness of rock, and sand and shingle, with its scanty acacia copses, and groups of date trees round the lonely well, that nature shews herself too strong for man, and crushes him down to the likeness of the ape.

Pages eluded her, but here and there single lines or words caught her attention as a thorny copse catches and plucks the garments of one going blindly through it.

MODERN ELFLAND I Cut a staff in a churchyard copse, I clad myself in ragged things, I set a feather in my cap That fell out of an angel's wings.

Robert Hood was now living in outlawry among the woodland copses and thickets.

A hundred yards from the road was a dense copse of undergrowth and bushes on the edge of the forest.

In winter the distant copse seemed black; now it appears of a dull reddish brown from the innumerable catkins and buds.

Ere we retired, The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky 320 Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse And open field, through which the pathway wound, And homeward led my steps.