Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/57

 And clime, ev'n every tree and herb, receives Its habitant peculiar: each to each The Great Invisible, and each to all, Thro' earth, and sea, and air, harmonious suits. Tempestuous regions, Darwent's naked Peaks, Snowden and blue Plynlymmon, and the wide Aerial sides of Cader-ydris huge; These are bestow'd on goat-horned sheep, of Fleece Hairy and coarse, of long and nimble shank, Who rove o'er bog or heath, and graze or brouze Alternate, to collect, with due dispatch, O'er the bleak wild, the thinly-scatter'd meal: But hills of milder air, that gently rise O'er dewy dales, a fairer species boast, Of shorter limb, and frontlet more ornate: Such the Silurian. If thy farm extends Near Cotswold Downs, or the delicious groves Of Symmonds, honour'd thro' the sandy soil Of elmy Ross, or Devon's myrtle vales, That drink clear rivers near the glassy sea, Regard this sort, and hence thy sire of lambs Select: his tawny Fleece in ringlets curl; Long swings his slender tail; his front is fenc'd With horns Ammonian, circulating twice Around each open ear, like those fair scrolls That grace the columns of th' Ionic dome. Yet should thy fertile glebe be marly clay, Like Melton pastures, or Tripontian fields, Where ever-gliding Avon's limpid wave Thwarts the long course of dusty Watling-street; That larger sort, of head defenceless, seek, Whose Fleece is deep and clammy, close and plain: The ram short-limbed, whose form compact describes One level line along his spacious back;