Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/57

And clime, ev'n every tree and herb, receives
Its habitant peculiar: each to each
The Great Invisible, and each to all,190
Thro' earth, and sea, and air, harmonious suits.
Tempestuous regions, Darwent's naked Peaks,
Snowden and blue Plynlymmon, and the wide
Aerial sides of Cader-ydris huge;
These are bestow'd on goat-horned sheep, of Fleece195
Hairy and coarse, of long and nimble shank,
Who rove o'er bog or heath, and graze or brouze
Alternate, to collect, with due dispatch,
O'er the bleak wild, the thinly-scatter'd meal:
But hills of milder air, that gently rise 200
O'er dewy dales, a fairer species boast,
Of shorter limb, and frontlet more ornate:
Such the Silurian. If thy farm extends
Near Cotswold Downs, or the delicious groves
Of Symmonds, honour'd thro' the sandy soil 205
Of elmy Ross, or Devon's myrtle vales,
That drink clear rivers near the glassy sea,
Regard this sort, and hence thy sire of lambs
Select: his tawny Fleece in ringlets curl;
Long swings his slender tail; his front is fenc'd 210
With horns Ammonian, circulating twice
Around each open ear, like those fair scrolls
That grace the columns of th' Ionic dome.
Yet should thy fertile glebe be marly clay,
Like Melton pastures, or Tripontian fields, 215
Where ever-gliding Avon's limpid wave
Thwarts the long course of dusty Watling-street;
That larger sort, of head defenceless, seek,
Whose Fleece is deep and clammy, close and plain:
The ram short-limbed, whose form compact describes 220
One level line along his spacious back;