So let him dwell not in the Town —
There Trade and Penury roar and weep :

* The reader will forgive me the length of the following exquisite
extract : " If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last
Michaelmas Day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning :
at first there was a vast fog ; but by the time that I was got seven
or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into
a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common,
and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great num-
bers of swallows clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if
they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear
and pleasant they were all on the wing at once, and by a placid
easy flight proceeded on southwards towards the sea : after this I
did not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler." —
White's « History of Selborne.'



THE PARADISE OF BIRDS. Ill

But 'neath the silence of a down
Disturbed by grazing sheep.
r

There, like his brook, his life shall glide,
Far from State-party, plot, and treason,

Nor feel the flow of Fortune's tide,
Beyond the change of season.
There he shall Learning woo, and Art,

Without a rival to unthrone ;
Nor seek to pain another's heart,

Since he may please his own.
Books he shall read in hill and tree ;

The flowers his weather shall portend
The birds his moralists shall be ;

And everything his friend.
