Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/52

 Over the numerous swains of every vale, With well-permitted power and watchful eye On each gay field to shed beneficence, Celestial office! Thou protect the song. On spacious airy downs and gentle hills, With grass and thyme o'erspread, and clover wild, Where smiling Phœbus tempers ev'ry breeze, The fairest flocks rejoice: they nor of halt, Hydropic tumours, nor of rot, complain, Evils deform'd and foul: nor with hoarse cough Disturb the music of the past'ral pipe; But, crowding to the note, with silence soft The close-woven carpet graze, where Nature blends Flow'rets and herbage of minutest size, Innoxious luxury. Wide airy downs Are Health's gay walks to shepherd and to sheep. All arid soils, with sand or chalky flint, Or shells deluvian mingled, and the turf That mantles over rocks of brittle stone, Be thy regard; and where low-tufted broom, Or box, or berry'd juniper, arise; Or the tall growth of glossy-rinded beech; And where the burrowing rabbit turns the dust; And where the dappled deer delights to bound. Such are the downs of Banstead, edg'd with woods And towery villas; such Dorcestrian fields, Whose flocks innumerous whiten all the land: Such those slow-climbing wilds that lead the step Insensibly to Dover's windy cliff, Tremendous height! and such the clover'd lawns And sunny mounts of beauteous Normanton, Health's cheerful haunt, and the selected walk Of Heathcote's leisure: such the spacious plain Of Sarum, spread like Ocean's boundless round, Where solitary Stonehenge, gray with moss,