Just starting from the corn, he cheerly sings,
And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings;
Still louder breathes, and in the face of day
Mounts up and calls on Giles to mark his way.
Close to his eye his hat he instant bends
And forms a friendly telescope that lends
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light
And place the wandering bird before his sight,
That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along;
Lost for a while yet pours a varied song;
The eye still follows and the cloud moves by,
Again he stretches up the clear blue sky,
His form, his motions, undistinguished quite,
Save when he wheels direct from shade to light.
In the end he falls asleep, and waking refreshed picks up his
poles and starts again brushing round.
Harvesting scenes succeed, with a picture of Mary, the village
beauty, taking her share in the work, and how the labourers in
their unwonted liveliness and new-found wit
Confess the presence of a pretty face.
She is very rustic herself in her appearance: -
Her hat awry, divested of her gown,
Her creaking stays of leather, stout and brown:
Invidious barrier! why art thou so high,
When the slight covering of her neck slips by,
Then half revealing to the eager sight
Her full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white?
The leather stays have no doubt gone the way of many other
dreadful things, even in the most rustic villages in the land;
not so the barbarous practice of docking horses' tails,
against which he protests in this place when describing the
summer plague of flies and the excessive sufferings of the
domestic animals, especially of the poor horses deprived of
their only defence against such an enemy.
