THE SQUIRREL-HUNT.

But gaudy plumage, sprightly strain,
And form genteel, were all in vain,

And of a transient date;

For caught and caged, and starved to death,
In dying sighs my little breath

Soon pass'd the wiry grate.

Thanks, gentle swain, for all my woes,

And thanks for this effectual close

And cure of every ill!

More cruelty could none express;

And I, if you had shown me less,

Had been your prisoner still.

COWPER.

THE SQUIRREL-HUNT.

HEN, as a nimble Squirrel from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filbert-food,

Sits partly on a bough his browne nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernell taking,
Till (with their crookes and bags) a sort of boyes
(To share with him) come with so great a noyse,
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leape to a neighbour oake;

Thence to a beeche, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst through the quagmires, and red water plashes,

The boyes runne dabling through thicke and thin,

One tears his hose, another breakes his shin:

THE HARE-BELL.

This, torn and tatter'd, hath with much adoe

Got by the bryers; and that hath lost his shoe;
This drops his hand; that headlong falls for haste;
Another cryes behinde for being last:

With stickes and stones, and many a sounding halloo,
The little foole, with no small sport, they follow;
Whilst he, from tree to tree, from spray to spray,
Gets to the wood, and hides him in his dray.

THE HARE-BELL.

WILLIAM BROWNE.

N Spring's green lap there blooms a flower,
Whose cups imbibe each vernal shower;
Who sips fresh Nature's balmy dew,

Clad in her sweetest, purest blue,

Yet shuns the ruddy beam of morning,

The shaggy wood's brown shade adorning.

Simple flow'ret! child of May!

Though hid from the broad eye of day,

Though doom'd to waste those pensive graces

In the wild wood's dark embraces,

In desert air thy sweets to shed,

Unnoticed droops thy languid head,