The nightingale has ceased to sing ;

The cuckoo now is seldom heard:
The whetted scythe is ringing now,
And sadness rests on bush and bough,
And on each singing bird.

The kine are couched beneath the trees,
From the broad sultriness of day:
The warmth and silence are profound;
And many a lovely face is browned,
Amongst the tedded hay.

Hushed are the winds-the very leaves
Are tranquil as an anchored bark:
And high the swallow skims, how high!
A level line along the sky,

Above the soaring lark.

Now come in groups the gipsy tribes,

From northern hills, from southern plains:

And many a panniered ass is swinging
The child that to itself is singing

Along the flowery lanes.

Stout men are loud in wrangling talk,

Where older tongues are gruff and tame :

Keen maiden laughter rings aloft,
Whilst many an undervoice is soft
From many a talking dame.

Their beaver hats are weather-stained,-
The one black plume is sadly gay:
Their squalid brats are slung behind
In cloaks, that flutter to the wind,
Of scarlet, brown, and grey.

This day a glorious day will be

To them upon the blossomed heath;

Where, tranquil as the brooding dove,
Bright blue is all spread out above,
And purple all beneath.

See Harry Lee pass by the hall;

Then by the steward's buildings range; Thence through the hamlet stalking fast; And hear him when securely past

Beyond the farthest grange.

"How knowing look these wealthy men,
Slantly upon me from the door;

Their looks declare that I am stout;
A wandering fool, a vagrant lout,
Deserving to be poor.

"God help them, for their narrow souls:
For mean and narrow souls have they!
Want I a buck? there is a park-
Want I a time? there is the dark-
And well I know the way.

"They talk about their parks and farms,
And nicely show the boundary line:
There's little truth in what they say-
These things seem only theirs by day,
Which in the night are mine.

"I love to see the farmers feed

Their poultry at the back-door sill; I spare them for the time-I spareThey thrive beneath the farmers' careI have them when I will.

"The sly old mastiff in the yard

Would fill another's soul with fear;
But, ere I prowl for boiled or roast,
I take good care he at his post
Can neither see nor hear.

"It is a goodly land we live in;

It is a glorious trade we drive:

And who their pleasant sports would bridle ; And who amongst us can be idle,

With ample room to thrive?"

Thus mutters he his moral notions,

When winding through the woody lanes;

'Tis thus his guileful soul he pleases; And thus it is his heart he eases

Of pride-inflicted pains.

And now he joins the gipsy tribes,

Who there from all the land are met,

Brought to one point by his renown,
Intending there the gipsy crown
Upon his head to set.

Proud are the people of their chief
As he is of that people proud-
And hearty greetings from them broke,
Beneath the sturdy forest oak,

Reciprocal and loud.

It were a long and weary task

To trace our hero's growing fame, Through open boldness or disguise, Till he for all the gipsies' prize

Had gained a wondrous name.

Never was statesman of the realm

In cunning more completely skilled: Throughout their tribes he could command The ready heart, the ready hand,

To do whate'er he willed.

By kindness done, by gifts bestowed,
With money fetched in busy marts,
By sure degrees he cleared his path;
And, fearing not a Joab's wrath,
He Absalomed all hearts.

Their king then growing old and weak,

Was pleased his spreading fame to hear; No jealous doubts disturbed his breast; Of who should reign when he should rest He felt no jealous fear.

He knew that in their little state

The sway was not from sire to son;
That no dull blockhead could inherit
A throne, due only unto merit,

And but by merit won.

To him well-known was Harry Lee

Oft had he tried, and praised his mettle : Had praised him-sweet is praise from kingsFor Harry oft with choicest things

Had filled the royal kettle.

Thus years before the old king died,

(And in good time his reign he ended,) Our hero saw above his head,

No sword suspended by a thread,

The gipsy crown suspended.

And now their king was in his grave,

And they, on Sherwood Forest met,
Brought there by Harry Lee's renown,
Intended there the sylvan crown
Upon his head to set.

There Harry Lee from tent to tent

Was welcomed with obsequious smiles;

Greetings of old familiar faces,

That he had met in loveliest places

Throughout the British isles.

And many a leman did he see,

Whom he in earlier days forsook;

'Twas strange he once had deemed them fair,
But now he saw amongst them there
Not one like Ellen Brooke.

Like Ellen Brooke,-thought he of her,
Whom early to the grave he led?

Not he, it were a foolish thing
That he, who soon would be a king,
Should think about the dead.

But see, about him come his tribe,
A thick and motley convocation :

And looking round from side to side,

In language near to this allied,

He makes them an oration.

"The God who made the heavens and earth, Each spreading field, each shadowy tree; Endowed with them no human brother

To the exclusion of another,

Who made them, left them free.

"Man makes, and man may claim his own, His ships, his temples, towns and towers,

But the wild creatures of the woods,
Free rangers of the fields and floods,

Are God's, and therefore ours.

"We are the only real kings,

The rightful sovereigns of the soil: As kings we stand on danger's brink, But still, as kings who rule and think, We live on those who toil.

"And since that here your king you make me, Your king I will not be in vain:

My right is hence a right divine,

I all prerogatives of mine

Will faithfully maintain."

Then did he take the royal oath,

A larger never king could swear; Whereat went up a deafening shout: Nor was there one his faith to doubt Amongst the many there.

All eyes were fixed upon their chief;

A thousand gleaming eyes intense:
All lips their chosen leader praised,
Whom solely his own "merit raised
To that bad eminence."

Then did he crown himself. Forsooth
He of Napoleon must have read,
Who, scorning priests, took up the crown,
Upright, instead of kneeling down,
And placed it on his head.

The slouching hat our hero wore,

The crown wherewith he king was crowned,

Wherein a pipe and a crow's feather,

Were stuck in fellowship together,

Was by a hundred winters browned.

Yet he so prized it, he had scorned
A golden diadem, made bright
With ruby lustre round it thrown,
Such favour found it in his own,
And in his people's sight.

His sceptre was a stout oak sapling,

Round which a snake well-carved was wreathed:

Cunning and strength that well bespoke,

Whilst from his frame, as from an oak,

"Deliberate valour breathed."

No throne of ivory, pearl, or gold,

With diamonds studded, could surpass,

Though fashioned for an eastern king,
Our hero's throne of purple ling,

And of the emerald grass.

His footstool was the solid earth,

His court spread out in pomp before him,

The heath arrayed in summer's smiles:

His empire broad, the British isles:

His dome, the heavens arched o'er him.

And unto him who thus could look

On the fresh earth and sun new risen;
Who breathed the free and odorous air,
Grand robes were wearisome to wear,
And palace walls a prison.

Antique and flowing was his dress:

And, from his temples bold and bare,

Back fell in many a dusky tress,

As liberal as the wilderness,

His ample growth of hair.

Like Cromwell's was his hardy front,

Where thought, but feeling none, was shown

Where, underneath a flitting grace,

Was firmly built up in his face,

A hardness as of stone.

No king in the old Saxon times,

When crowned beneath some royal tree,

With all his noble Thanes around,

With all the fitting honours crowned,
Felt more a king than he.

Even Abraham, pitched on Mamre's plains,
Had never tent more broadly calm,
When on their dreadful mission bent,
Three angels rested in his tent

Beneath the shadowy palm.

And Harry Lee was now a king,

Joy filled his tent to overflowing;
Hope had he none, nor any fear;
Won had he all he counted dear;
Elated roamed he anywhere,

Nor what he did was knowing.
Bewick alone the scene could show,

In groups, or singly here and there: The vagrant dress, the careless grace, Of many a gipsy form and face,

The manly and the fair.

Old way worn asses, grey, grotesque,
Coarse bull-dogs, elder children wild,
The poverty without distress,
And disregarded wretchedness,
In mother and in child.

But Bewick's burin, Crabbe's true pen,
Could never give to sketch or book,
The revel, racket, romp, and rout,
And jousts, with each concluding shout,
In which their king partook;

Could never show how quiet fled,

And darkness by their fires was chased; And round those fires how beldames strong Danced to the screaming of a song,

Like witches on the waste.

Never since Robin Hood was king,

In merry Sherwood had there been,

'Mid haunts that hallowed seemed to quiet.

Such jolly uproar, jovial riot,

Amongst the bushes green.

They squeezed, and fiddled, strained, and blew: True harmony was put to death:

The dissonance more drunken grew,

The fiddle-strings were scraped in two,
And bagpipes out of breath.

They danced, or capered, which you will;
Their action nothing could excel:

To thread the maze, retreat, advance,
They knew, if not the Pyrrhic dance,
It pleased them just as well.

They wrestled; for the Isthmian games,

If aught they knew, they nothing cared; They boxed, they fought, such war had charms; And dreadful were their brawny arms,

When for the battle bared.