Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/74

Selected such for hospitable beds
To rest the stranger, or the gory chief
From battle or the chase of wolves return'd.
When many-colour'd ev'ning sinks behind 55
The purple woods and hills, and opposite
Rises, full-orb'd, the silver harvest moon,
To light th' unwearied farmer, late a-field
His scatter'd sheaves collecting, then expect
The artists, bent on speed, from populous Leeds, 60
Norwich, or Froome ; they traverse every plain
And every dale where farm or cottage smokes :
Reject them not ; and let the season's price
Win thy soft treasures ; let the bulky wain
Thro' dusty roads roll nodding ; or the bark, 65
That silently adown the cerule stream
Glides with white sails, dispense the downy freight
To copsy villages on either side,
And spiry towns, where ready Diligence,
The grateful burden to receive, awaits, 70
Like strong Briareus, with his hundred hands.
In the same Fleece diversity of wool
Grows intermingled, and excites the care
Of curious skill to sort the several kinds.
But in this subtle science none exceed 75
Th' industrious Belgians, to the work who guide
Each feeble hand of want : their spacious domes,
With boundless hospitality, receive
Each nation's outcasts : there the tender eye
May view the maim'd, the blind, the lame, employ'd, 80
And unreject'd age : ev'n childhood there
Its little fingers turning to the toil
Delighted : nimbly, with habitual speed,
They sever lock from lock, and long, and short,
And soft, and rigid, pile in sev'ral heaps. 85
This the dusk hatter asks : another shines