Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/164

 While thro' their chearful band the rural talk The rural scandal, and the rural jest Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time, And steal unfelt the sultry hours away. Behind the master walks, builds up the shocks; And, conscious, glancing oft on every side His fated eye, feels his heart heave with joy. The gleaners spread around, and here and there, Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick. Be not too narrow, husbandmen! but fling From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth, The liberal handful. Think, oh grateful think! How good the is to you; Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields; While these unhappy partners of your kind Wide-hover round you, like the fowls of heaven, And ask their humble dole. The various turns Of fortune ponder; that your sons may want What now, with hard reluctance, faint, ye give.

lovely young once had friends; And Fortune smil'd, deceitful, on her birth. For in her helpless years depriv'd of all, Of every stay, save innocence and , She, with her widow'd mother, feeble, old, And poor, liv'd in a cottage, far retir'd Among the windings of a woody vale; By solitude and deep surrounding shades, But more by bashful modesty, conceal'd, Together thus they shunn'd the cruel scorn Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet From giddy passion and low-minded, pride: Almost on Nature's common bounty fed; Like the gay birds that sung them to repose, Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare. Her form was fresher than the morning-rose, When