Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/74

 Selected such for hospitable beds To rest the stranger, or the gory chief From battle or the chase of wolves return'd. When many-colour'd ev'ning sinks behind The purple woods and hills, and opposite Rises, full-orb'd, the silver harvest moon, To light th' unwearied farmer, late a-field His scatter'd sheaves collecting, then expect The artists, bent on speed, from populous Leeds, Norwich, or Froome ; they traverse every plain And every dale where farm or cottage smokes : Reject them not ; and let the season's price Win thy soft treasures ; let the bulky wain Thro' dusty roads roll nodding ; or the bark, That silently adown the cerule stream Glides with white sails, dispense the downy freight To copsy villages on either side, And spiry towns, where ready Diligence, The grateful burden to receive, awaits, Like strong Briareus, with his hundred hands. In the same Fleece diversity of wool Grows intermingled, and excites the care Of curious skill to sort the several kinds. But in this subtle science none exceed Th' industrious Belgians, to the work who guide Each feeble hand of want : their spacious domes, With boundless hospitality, receive Each nation's outcasts : there the tender eye May view the maim'd, the blind, the lame, employ'd, And unreject'd age : ev'n childhood there Its little fingers turning to the toil Delighted : nimbly, with habitual speed, They sever lock from lock, and long, and short, And soft, and rigid, pile in sev'ral heaps. This the dusk hatter asks : another shines