Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/55

The little smiling cottage warm embower'd;
The little smiling cottage! where at eve 120
He meets his rosy children at the door,
Prattling their welcomes, and his honest wife,
With good brown cake and bacon slice, intent
To cheer his hunger after labour hard.
Nor only soil, there also must be found 125
Felicity of clime, and aspect bland,
Where gentle sheep may nourish locks of price.
In vain the silken Fleece on windy brows,
And northern slopes of cloud-dividing hills,
Is sought, tho' soft Iberia spreads her lap 130
Beneath their rugged feet and names their heights
Biscaian or Segovian. Bothnic realms,
And dark Norwegian, with their choicest fields,
Dingles, and dells, by lofty fir embower'd,
In vain the bleaters court. Alike they shun 135
Libya's hot plains. What taste have they for groves
Of palm, or yellow dust of gold? no more
Food to the flock than to the miser wealth,
Who kneels upon the glittering heap and starves.
Ev'n Gallic Abbeville the shining Fleece,140
That richly decorates her loom, acquires
Basely from Albion, by th' ensnaring bribe,
The bate of avarice, which with felon fraud
For its own wanton mouth from thousands steals.
How erring oft the judgment in its hate 145
Or fond desire! Those slow-descending showers,
Those hovering fogs, that bathe our growing vales
In deep November (loath'd by trifling Gaul,
Effeminate), are gifts the Pleiads shed,
Britannia's handmaids: as the beverage falls 150
Her hills rejoice, her valleys laugh and sing.
Hail, noble Albion! where no golden mines,
No soft perfumes, nor oils, nor myrtle bowers,