Page:Beachy Head and Other Poems.pdf/62

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This saying heard, From certain new acquaintance he had found, Who at their perfect ease, Amid a field of peas Boasted to him, that all the country round, The wheat, and oats, and barley, rye and tares, Quite to the neighbouring sea, were theirs; And theirs the oak, and beech-woods, far and near, For their right noble owner was a peer, And they themselves, luxuriantly were stored In a great dove-cote—to amuse my lord! "Toujours perdrix ne valent rien." That's strange! When people once are happy, wherefore change? So thought our stock-dove, but communication, With birds in his new friend's exalted station, Whose means of information,