The labour'd earth your pains have sow'd and till'd; 100 'Tis just you reap the product of the field: Yours be the harvest, 'tis the beggar's gain To glean the fallings of the loaded wain.

To towns, whose shades of no rude sound complain, To ringing team unknown and grating wain, 85 To flat-roof'd towns, that touch the water's bound, Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound, Or from the bending rocks obtrusive cling, And o'er the whiten'd wave their shadows fling; Wild round the steeps the little [G] pathway twines, 90 And Silence loves it's purple roof of vines.

And, through the win-ter's cold and snow, We trust-ed that God's care would bring The green and ten-der blade in spring, Which che-rished by the sun and rain Of sum-mer, now has yield-ed grain In au-tumn, when the reap-er leaves His cot to cut and bind the sheaves, And load with them the nod-ding wain Which bears them home-ward from the plain.

[40] Where, mixed with graceful birch, the sombrous pine And yew-tree o'er the silver rocks recline; I love to mark the quarry's moving trains, Dwarf panniered steeds, and men, and numerous wains:

There, too, were herds of long-haired goats, rearing mid the bushes and showing their beards over them, or following the shepherd to their fold, as the shadows began to lengthen,or rude and screaming wains, tugged by uncouth buffaloes, with low heads and knotted knees, bred among the malaria-stricken marshes.

It is merely one of those quiet corners of flat, homely England, where man and beast seem on good terms with each other, where all green things grow in abundance, where from of old tilth and pasture-land are humbly observant of seasons and alternations, where the brown roads are familiar only with the tread of the labourer, with the light wheel of the farmer's gig, or the rumbling of the solid wain.

We land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us, the northern wain shining on the Hadriatic, as if, while Diocletian was seeking rest by Salona, the star of Constantine was rising over York and Trier.