Poems, &c. (1790) Wherein It Is Attempted To Describe Certain Views Of Nature And Of Rustic Manners; And Also, To Point Out, In Some Instances, The Different Influence Which The Same Circumstances Produce On Different Characters

Excerpt

The cock, warm roosting ’midst his feather’d dames,
Now lifts his beak and snuffs the morning air,
Stretches his neck and claps his heavy wings,
Gives three hoarse crows, and glad his talk is done;
Low, chuckling, turns himself upon the roost,
Then nestles down again amongst his mates. 
The lab’ring hind, who on his bed of straw,
Beneath his home-made coverings, coarse, but warm,
Lock’d in the kindly arms of her who spun them,
Dreams of the gain that next year’s crop should bring;
Or at some fair disposing of his wool,
Or by some lucky and unlook’d-for bargain. 
Fills his skin purse with heaps of tempting gold,
Now wakes from sleep at the unwelcome call,
And finds himself but just the same poor man
As when he went to rest.—­
He hears the blast against his window beat,
And wishes to himself he were a lord,
That he might lie a-bed.—­
He rubs his eyes, and stretches out his arms;
Heigh ho! heigh ho! he drawls with gaping mouth,
Then most unwillingly creeps out of bed,
And without looking-glass puts on his clothes. 
With rueful face he blows the smother’d fire,
And lights his candle at the red’ning coal;
First sees that all be right amongst his cattle,
Then hies him to the barn with heavy tread,
Printing his footsteps on the new fall’n snow. 
From out the heap of corn he pulls his sheaves,
Dislodging the poor red-breast from his shelter,
Where all the live-long night he slept secure;
But now afrighted, with uncertain flight
He flutters round the walls, to seek some hole,
At which he may escape out to the frost. 
And now the flail, high whirling o’er his head,
Descends with force upon the jumping sheave,
Whilst every rugged wall, and neighboring cot
Re-echoes back the noise of his strokes.