Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/76

Devours the grassy sward, the verdant food
Of injur'd herds and flocks, or what the plough
Should turn and moulder for the bearded grain :
Pernicious habit ! drawing gradual on 125
Increasing beggary, and Nature's frowns.
Add too, the idle pilf'rer easier there
Eludes detection, when a lamb or ewe
From intermingled flocks he steals ; or when,
With loosen'd tether of his horse or cow, 130
The milky stalk of the tall green-ear'd corn,
The year's slow rip'ning fruit, the anxious hope
Of his laborious neighbour, he destroys.
There are who over-rate our spungy stores,
Who deem that Nature grants no clime but ours 135
To spread upon its fields the dews of heav'n,
And feed the silky Fleece ; that card nor comb
The hairy wool of Gaul can ne'er subdue,
To form the thread, and mingle in the loom,
Unless a third from Britain swell the heap : 140
Illusion all ; tho' of our sun and air
Not trivial is the virtue, nor their fruit
Upon our snowy flocks of small esteem :
The grain of brightest tincture none so well
Imbibes : the wealthy Gobelins must to this 145
Bear witness, and the costliest of their looms.
And though with hue of crocus or of rose
No pow'r of subtle food, or air, or soil,
Can dye the living Fleece ; yet 't will avail
To note their influence in the tinging vase : 150
Therefore from herbage of old pastur'd plains,
Chief from the matted turf of azure marl
Where grow the whitest locks, collect thy stores.
Those fields regard not thro' whose recent turf
The miry soil appears ; nor ev'n the streams 155
Of Yare or silver Stroud can purify