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 yields,
   And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields. 
   On whitehorn tow’ring, and the leafless rose,
   A frost-nipped feast in bright vermilion glows;
   Where clust’ring sloes in glossy order rise,
   He crops the loaded branch, a cumbrous prize;
   And on the flame the splutt’ring fruit he rests,
   Placing green sods to seat the coming guests;
   His guests by promise; playmates young and gay;
   But ah! fresh pastures lure their steps away! 
   He sweeps his hearth, and homeward looks in vain,
   Till feeling Disappointment’s cruel pain
   His fairy revels are exchanged for rage,
   His banquet marred, grown dull his hermitage,
   The field becomes his prison, till on high
   Benighted birds to shades and coverts fly.