Then to the copse, Thick with entangling grass, or prickly furze, With silence lead thy many-coloured hounds, In all their beauty's pride.

Where the golden furze With its green thin spurs Doth catch at the maiden's gown.

The brake fern is dead and withered; the tip of each frond curled over downwards by the frost, but it forms a brown background to the dull green furze which is alight here and there with scattered blossom, by contrast so brilliantly yellow as to seem like flame.

The moorland colt enjoys the thorny furze The dullest boor will seek a fight, and count His pleasure by his wounds; you must forget, love, Eve's curse lays suffering, as their natural lot, On womankind, till custom makes it light.

And what more noble than the vernal furze With golden caskets hung? I have seen whole cotees or coteaux (sides of hills) in the sweet little island of Jersey thickly mantled with the golden radiance of this beautiful wildflower.

What joy it must be, like a living breeze, To flutter about 'mid the flowering trees; Lightly to soar, and to see beneath, The wastes of the blossoming purple heath, And the yellow furze, like fields of gold, That gladdened some fairy region old!

Green leaves were here; 30 But 'twas the foliage of the rocksthe birch, The yew, the holly, and the bright green thorn, With hanging islands of resplendent furze: