ringing corn.
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.

The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny day; a sable desert
in the neighbourhood of Windsor; fruitful fields arising in it, and
crowned with tufted trees and springing corn--evidently Pope saw all
this, not on an eminence, in the ruffling wind, but in his study with
his back to the window, and the Georgics or a translation of them
before him.

Here again is a little picture of rural life from the _Winter Morning
Walk_.

The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
_He from the stack carves out the accustomed load
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away_: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd
The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
from, morn to eve, his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy.
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught
But now and then with pressure of his thumb
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.

The minutely faithful description of the man carving the load of hay
out of the stack, and again those of the gambolling dog, and the
woodman smoking his pipe with the stream of smoke trailing behind him,
remind us of the touches of minute fidelity in Homer. The same may be
said of many other passages.

The sheepfold here
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.
_At first, progressive as a stream they seek
The middle field: but, scatter'd by degrees,
Each to his choice, soon wh