Jul 9th, 1755
Gleads kite the Saxon meers and marching hoopoes breed
but streams yield nothing but bull's head or miller's thumb;
the teams of ducks, widgeons, and multitudes of teal;
owls like dogs that hide what they cannot eat.
Three gross-beaks in my fields in the dead season,
shot with my dreams of swallows on the Isle of Wight
instead of cock snipes piping and humming to seed.
I have had yet no opportunity of procuring mice.
Aug 1st, 1759
I pass the trappers and thrusters with loaded corves:
I had rather look than go in pulpits. I write
rain, ecstatic as a solo. The hood-mould
shows water on the bulwark's central mullion
but the covert of eminence is truly beech,
most lovely of forest trees: glossy, pendulous,
beyond unmellow clay and crumbling black malm.
It seems the bees do not resent my large speaking trumpet.
Jul 14th, 1789
The Saxon's wolf-month: the floor sweats in wet weather
and when the lavants flood, corn will be expensive.
The blattae were almost subdued with fly-water,
surviving for weeks without heads. Tubbed and pickled
a fat porker, then culled some scummings for rushes.
Parties of ousels canton on the Sussex downs
and the goat-sucker or churn-owl jarrs on a bough
while the Bastille storms into history and Selbourne.