Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/55

 The little smiling cottage warm embower'd; The little smiling cottage! where at eve He meets his rosy children at the door, Prattling their welcomes, and his honest wife, With good brown cake and bacon slice, intent To cheer his hunger after labour hard. Nor only soil, there also must be found Felicity of clime, and aspect bland, Where gentle sheep may nourish locks of price. In vain the silken Fleece on windy brows, And northern slopes of cloud-dividing hills, Is sought, tho' soft Iberia spreads her lap Beneath their rugged feet and names their heights Biscaian or Segovian. Bothnic realms, And dark Norwegian, with their choicest fields, Dingles, and dells, by lofty fir embower'd, In vain the bleaters court. Alike they shun Libya's hot plains. What taste have they for groves Of palm, or yellow dust of gold? no more Food to the flock than to the miser wealth, Who kneels upon the glittering heap and starves. Ev'n Gallic Abbeville the shining Fleece, That richly decorates her loom, acquires Basely from Albion, by th' ensnaring bribe, The bate of avarice, which with felon fraud For its own wanton mouth from thousands steals. How erring oft the judgment in its hate Or fond desire! Those slow-descending showers, Those hovering fogs, that bathe our growing vales In deep November (loath'd by trifling Gaul, Effeminate), are gifts the Pleiads shed, Britannia's handmaids: as the beverage falls Her hills rejoice, her valleys laugh and sing. Hail, noble Albion! where no golden mines, No soft perfumes, nor oils, nor myrtle bowers,