fly, which deposits its egg under the skin, and raises a boil, sometimes fata! to calves, is the work of this bird, which they call a Puckeridge. Nothing can convince them that their beasts are not injured by this bird, which they therefore hold in abhorrence [Smith's note, referring at the beginning to John Aikin's An Essay on the Application of Natural History to Poetry, 1777, and in the middle to sonnet 42 in her own Elegiac Sonnets].
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62 / CHARLOTTE SMITH
With sighs to Memory giv'n, regret0 recall with regret 555 The Shepherd of the Hill.
Yet otherwhile it seem'd as if young Hope Her flattering pencil gave to Fancy's hand, And in his wanderings, rear'd to sooth his soul Ideal bowers of pleasure.�Then, of Solitude
560 And of his hermit life, still more enamour'd, His home was in the forest; and wild fruits And bread sustain'd him. There in early spring The Barkmen7 found him, e'er the sun arose; There at their daily toil, the Wedgecutters8
565 Beheld him thro' the distant thicket move. The shaggy dog following the truffle hunter,9 Bark'd at the loiterer; and perchance at night Belated villagers from fair or wake, While the fresh night-wind let the moonbeams in
570 Between the swaying boughs, just saw him pass, And then in silence, gliding like a ghost He vanish'd! Lost among the deepening gloom.� But near one ancient tree, whose wreathed roots Form'd a rude couch, love-songs and scatter'd rhymes,
575 Unfinish'd sentences, or half erased, And rhapsodies like this, were sometimes found.�
Let us to woodland wilds repair While yet the glittering night-dews seem To wait the freshly-breathing air,
580 Precursive of the morning beam, That rising with advancing day, Scatters the silver drops away.
An elm, uprooted by the storm, The trunk with mosses gray and green, 585 Shall make for us a rustic form,
Where lighter grows the forest scene; And far among the bowery shades, Are ferny lawns and grassy glades.
Retiring May to lovely June 590 Her latest garland now resigns; The banks with cuckoo-flowers1 are strewn, The woodwalks blue with columbines,2
7. As soon as the sap begins to rise, the trees intended for felling are cut and barked. At which time the men who are employed in that business pass whole days in the woods [Smith's note], 8. The wedges used in ship-building are made of beech wood, and great numbers are cut every year in the woods near the Downs [Smith's note]. 9. Truffles are found under the beech woods, by means of small dogs trained to hunt them by the scent [Smith's note].
1. Cuckoo-flowers. Lychnis dioica. Shakespeare describes the Cuckoo buds as being yellow [Love's Labor's Lost 5.2.871], He probably meant the numerous Ranunculi, or March marigolds (Caltha palustris) which so gild the meadows in Spring; but poets have never been botanists. The Cuckoo flower is the Lychnisfloscuctili [Smith's note]. 2. Columbines. Aquilegia vulgaris [Smith's note].
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BEACH Y HEA D / 6 3 And with its reeds, the wandering stream Reflects the flag-flower's3 golden gleam. 595600 There, feathering down the turf to meet, Their shadowy arms the beeches spread, While high above our sylvan seat, Lifts the light ash its airy head; And later leaved, the oaks between Extend their boughs of vernal green. 605The slender birch its paper rind Seems offering to divided love, And shuddering even without a wind Aspens, their paler foliage move, As if some spirit of the air Breath'd a low sigh in passing there. 6ioThe Squirrel in his frolic mood, Will fearless bound among the boughs; Yaffils4 laugh loudly thro' the wood, And murmuring ring-doves tell their vows; While we, as sweetest woodscents rise, Listen to woodland melodies. 615And I'll contrive a sylvan room Against the time of summer heat, Where leaves, inwoven in Nature's loom, Shall canopy our green retreat; And gales that "close the eye of day"5 Shall linger, e'er they die away. And when a sere and sallow hue 620 From early frost the bower receives, I'll dress the sand rock cave for you, And strew the floor with heath and leaves, That you, against the autumnal air May find securer shelter there. 625630 The Nightingale will then have ceas'd To sing her moonlight serenade; But the gay bird with blushing breast,6 And Woodlarks7 still will haunt the shade, And by the borders of the spring Reed-wrens8 will yet be carolling.
3. Flag-flower. Iris pseudacorns [Smith's note], 4. Yaffils. Woodpeckers (Picus); three or four species in Britain [Smith's note]. 5. "And liquid notes that close the eye of day." Milton [Sonnet 1, "O Nightingale"]. The idea here meant to be conveyed is of the evening wind, so welcome after a hot day of Summer, and which appears to sooth and lull all nature into tranquillity [Smith's note]. 6. The Robin (Motacilla rubecula), which is always heard after other songsters have ceased to sing [Smith's note]. 7. The Woodlark (Alauda nemorosa), sings very late [Smith's note]. 8. Reed-wrens (Motacilla amndinacea), sing all the summer and autumn, and are often heard during the night [Smith's note].
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64 / CHARLOTTE SMITH
The forest hermit's lonely cave None but such soothing sounds shall reach, Or hardly heard, the distant wave Slow breaking on the stony beach; 635 Or winds, that now sigh soft and low, Now make wild music as they blow.
And then, before the chilling North The tawny foliage falling light, Seems, as it flits along the earth,
640 The footfall of the busy Sprite, Who wrapt in pale autumnal gloom, Calls up the mist-born Mushroom.
Oh! could I hear your soft voice there, And see you in the forest green 645 All beauteous as you are, more fair
You'd look, amid the sylvan scene, And in a wood-girl's simple guise, Be still more lovely in mine eyes.
Ye phantoms of unreal delight, 650 Visions of fond delirium born! Rise not on my deluded sight,
Then leave me drooping and forlorn To know, such bliss can never be, Unless Amanda loved like me.
655 The visionary, nursing dreams like these, Is not indeed unhappy. Summer woods Wave over him, and whisper as they wave, Some future blessings he may yet enjoy. And as above him sail the silver clouds,
660 He follows them in thought to distant climes, Where, far from the cold policy of this, Dividing him from her he fondly loves, He, in some island of the southern sea,9 May haply build his cane-constructed bower
665 Beneath the bread-fruit, or aspiring palm, With long green foliage rippling in the gale. Oh! let him cherish his ideal bliss� For what is life, when Hope has ceas'd to strew Her fragile flowers along its thorny way?
670 And sad and gloomy are his days, who lives Of Hope abandon'd!
Just beneath the rock Where Beachy overpeers the channel wave,
9. An allusion to the visionary delights of the fertility of their country gives them, produces the newly discovered islands [Polynesia], where it was grossest vices; and a degree of corruption that late at first believed men lived in a state of simplicity navigators think will end in the extirpation of the and happiness; but where, as later enquiries have whole people in a few years [Smith's note]. ascertained, that exemption from toil, which the
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BEACHY HEAD / 65