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