Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/359

225 Crown'd with the ears of corn, now come,

And, to the pipe, sing Harvest-home.

Come forth, my lord, and see the cart

Drest up with all the country art.

See here a maukin, there a sheet,

As spotlesse pure as it is sweete;

The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,

Clad all in linen white as lillies.

The harvest swains and wenches bound

For joy, to see the Hock-cart crown'd.

About the cart heare how the rout

Of rural younglings raise the shout,

Pressing before, some coming after,

Those with a shout, and these with laughter.

Some blesse the cart, some kisse the sheaves,

Some pranke them up with oaken leaves:

Some cross the fill horse, some with great

Devotion stroak the home-borne wheat.

The younger portion of the Harvest-throng find abundant employment in searching the hedges for the favourite and refreshing fruit of the Blackberry—and we see them standing in groups in lanes and fields, with their plump, rosy faces dyed, in no very becoming style it is true, with the dark purple juice; while many a woful rent in frock and pinafore tells of their exploits among the tangled and prickly briars. In the woods, too, both blackberry-gathering and nutting may now be enjoyed to perfection; and in autumn's Forest scenery the Poet and Painter find her greatest glory. Every tree, aye, almost every leaf has a different tint, and the distant wooddy landscape is touched with every hue of the painter's palette, laid on by the delicate and harmonious finger of Nature. Few spots can display this magnificent