SQUIRREL HUNTING.

Only the curled streams soft chidings kept,

And little gales, that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisperings stirred,
As loath to waken any singing bird.

BROWNE.

IN THE FOREST.

HEN shaws been sheene, and shruddes full fayre,
And leaves both large and longe,

It's merry walking in the fayre forest,
To heare the small birds' songe.

The woodweele sange, and wold not cease,

Sitting upon the spraye,

So lowde, he wakened Robin Hood,

In the greenwood where he laye.

Old Ballad.

SQUIRREL HUNTING.

NIMBLE squirrel from the wood,

Ranging the hedges for his filbert food,

Sits partly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking
When with their crooks and bags a host of boys,

To share with him, come with so great a noise

That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leap to a neighbouring oak,

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Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes;
While through the quagmires and red water-plashes
The boys run, dabbling on through thick and thin.
One tears his hose, the other breaks his shin;
This, torn and tattered, hath, with much ado,

Got through the briers-and that hath lost his shoe;
This drops his band,-that, headlong falls for haste;
Another cries behind for being the last.

With sticks and stones, and many a sounding hollow
The little fool with no small sport they follow;
Whilst he, from tree to tree, from spray to spray,
Gets to the wood and hides him in his dray.

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t

THINK of thee when the bright sunlight shimmers
Across the sea;

When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers,
I think of thee.

I see thee, if far up the pathway yonder

The dust be stirred;

If faint steps o'er the little bridge to wander
At night be heard.