Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/54

For cumbent sheep; from broken slumber oft
They rise benumb'd, and vainly shift the couch;85
Their wasted sides their evil plight declare:
Hence, tender in his care, the shepherd swain
Seeks each contrivance. Here it would avail
At a meet distance from the sheltr'ing mound
To sink a trench, and on the hedge-long bank 90
Sow frequent sand, with lime, and dark manure,
Which to the liquid element will yield
A porous way, a passage to the foe.
Plough not such pastures; deep in spongy grass
The oldest carpet is the warmest lair, 95
And soundest: in new herbage coughs are heard.
Nor love too frequent shelter, such as decks
The vale of Severn, Nature's garden wide,
By the blue steeps, of distant Malvern wall'd,
Solemnly vast. The trees of various shade,100
Scene behind scene, with fair delusive pomp
Enrich the prospect, but they rob the lawns.
Nor prickly brambles, white with woolly theft,
Should tuft thy fields. Applaud not the remiss
Dimetians, who along their mossy dales 105
Consume, like grasshoppers, the summer hour,
While round them stubborn thorns and furze increase,
And creeping briars. I knew a careful swain
Who gave them to the crackling flames, and spread
Their dust saline upon the deepening grass;110
And oft with labour-strengthen'd arm he delv'd
The draining trench across his verdant slopes,
To intercept the small meandring rills
Of upper hamlets. Haughty trees, that sour
The shaded grass, that weaken thorn-set mounds,115
And harbour villain crows, he rare allow'd;
Only a slender tuft of useful ash,
And mingled beech and elm, securely tall,