edge and rush and reed;
Through tangled thickets headlong on they go,
Then stop and listen for their fancied foe;
The hindmost still the growing panic spreads,
Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds,
Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap;
Yet glorying in their fortunate escape,
Their groundless terrors by degrees soon cease,
And Night's dark reign restores their peace.
For now the gale subsides, and from each bough
The roosting pheasant's short but frequent crow
Invites to rest, and huddling side by side
The herd in closest ambush seek to hide;
Seek some warm slope with shagged moss o'erspread,
Dried leaves their copious covering and their bed.
In vain may Giles, through gathering glooms that fall,
And solemn silence, urge his piercing call;
Whole days and nights they tarry 'midst their store,
Nor quit the woods till oaks can yield no more.

It is a delightful passage to one that knows a pig--the animal we
respect for its intelligence, holding it in this respect higher, more
human, than the horse, and at the same time laugh at on account of
certain ludicrous points about it, as for example its liability to lose
its head. Thousands of years of comfortable domestic life have failed to
rid it of this inconvenient heritage from the time when wild in woods
it ran. Yet in this particular instance the terror of the swine does
not seem wholly inexcusable, if we know a wild duck as well as a pig,
especially the duck that takes to haunting a solitary woodland pool,
who, when intruded on, springs up with such a sudden tremendous splash
and flutter of wings and outrageous screams, that man himself, if not
prepared for it, may be thrown off his balance.

Passing over other scenes, about one hundred and fifty lines, we come to
the second notable passage, when after the sowing of the winter wheat,
poor Giles once more takes up his old occupation of rook-scaring. It is
now as in spring and summer--

Keen blows the blast and ceaseless rain descends;
The half-stripped hedge a sorry shelter lends,

and he thinks it would be nice to have a hovel, no matter how small, to
take refuge in, and at once sets about its construction.

In some sequestered nook, embanked around,
Sods for its walls and straw in burdens bound;
Dried fuel hoarded is his richest store,
And circling smoke obscures his little door;
Whence creeping forth to duty's call he yie