The Naturalist's summer. Evening walk.

To Thomas Pennant Esq

_ _ _ equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis¹

Ingenium²_ _ _ _ _

When day decline sheds a milder gleam;

What time the may-fly (x.) haunts the pool or stream;

When the still owl skims round the grassing mead;

What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;

Then be the tie to steal a down the vale.

And listen to the vagrant (C:) cuckow’s tale;

To hear the clamorous (ϒ.) curlew call his mate;

Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;

To see the swallow sweep the dark’ning plain

Belated, to support her clamant train;

To mark the swift in giddy rapid swing

Dash round the steeple, unsubdu’d of wing:

Amusive birds!_ _ _ say, where your hid retreat,

When the frost rages, & the tempests beat:

Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,

When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head?

Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride:

The God of Nature is your secret guide!

When deep’ning shades obscure the face of day.

To yonder bench leaf-shelter’ed let us stray,

‘Til blended objects fail the swimming sight,

And all the fading landscape sinks in night;

To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by

With buzzing wing; or the shrill (δ.) cricket cry;

To see the feeding bat glance thro’ the wood;

Or catch the distant falling of the flood:

While o’er the cliff th’ awak’ned churn-owl hung

Thro’ the still gloom protracts his chattering song:

While high in air, & pois’d upon his wings

Unseen, the soft enamour’d (ε.) woodlark sings:

These, Nature’s works the curious mind employ.

Inspire a soothing melancholy joy;

As fancy warms a pleasing kind of pain

Steals o’er the cheek, & thrills the creeping vein!

Each rural sight, &_^^each sound, each smell combine:

The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine;

The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze,

Or cottage-chimney smoking thro’ the trees.

The chilling night-dews fall - - - - away, retire,

What time the glow-worm lights her amorous fire: (η.)

Fore-er Night’s veil had half obscur’d the sky

Th impatient damosel hung her lamp on high:

True to the signal, by Love’s meteor led,

Leander hasten’d to his Hero’s bed. (Ѳ.)

(x.) The angler’s may-fly, the ephemera vulgate Linn: comes forth from it’s aurelia state, & emerges out of the water about six in the evening, & dies about eleven at night, determining the date of it’s fly-state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4:^th of June, & continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli & c.

(C.) Vagrant cuckow; so called because being tyed-down by no incubation, or attendance about the nutrition of it’s young, it wanders without control. (ϒ.) Charadrius oedicnemus. (δ.) Gryllus campestris. (ε.) In hot summer-nights wood--larks soar to a prodigious height, & hang singing in the air (η.) The female glow-worm makes use of her light as a signal to the male, who is a slender, dusky scarab. (Ѳ.) See the story of Hero & Leander.

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Editorial notes

1. Translation: indeed, I believe, because it is divine to them
2. Translation: Genius