no [e]staff sustains, And life, still vig'rous, revels in my veins; Grant me, kind heaven, to find some happier place, Where honesty and sense are no disgrace; Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play, Some peaceful vale, with nature's paintings gay; Where once the harass'd Briton found repose,

Ovid himself might wish to sing the dame Whom Windsor Forest sees a gliding stream; On silver feet, with annual osier crown'd, She runs for ever through poetic ground.

Short space he stoodthen waved his hand; Down sunk the disappearing band: Each warrior vanished where he stood, In broom or bracken, heath or wood: Sunk brand and spear, and bended bow, In osiers pale and copses low; It seemed as if their mother Earth Had swallowed up her warlike birth.

A stout osier grew, not straight upward, but leaning across the water, shadowing the spot with its soft foliage.

Baggage of every kind was slung across the backs of horses, or stowed into cumbrous two-wheeled waggons made of rough planks, or of laths covered with twisted osiers, which had been seized from farmer or peasant for the king's journey.