I love to see the old heath's withered
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling
And for the haw round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen
And hang on little twigs and start again.
