Her hat awry, divested of her gown, Her creaking stays of leather, stout and brown: Invidious barrier! why art thou so high, When the slight covering of her neck slips by, Then half revealing to the eager sight Her full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white? The leather stays have no doubt gone the way of many other dreadful things, even in the most rustic villages in the land; not so the barbarous practice of docking horses' tails, against which he protests in this place when describing the summer plague of flies and the excessive sufferings of the domestic animals, especially of the poor horses deprived of their only defence against such an enemy. At his own little farm there was yet another plague in the form of an old broken-winged gander, "the pest and tryant of the yard," whose unpleasant habit it was to go for the beasts and seize them by the fetlocks. The swine alone did not resent the attacks but welcomed them, receiving the assaults as caresses, and stretching themselves out and lying down and closing their pigs' eyes, they would emit grunts of satisfaction, while the triumphant bird, followed by the whole gabbling flock, would trample on the heads of their prostrate foes. "Autumn" opens bravely: Again the year's decline, 'midst storms and floods, The thund'ring chase, the yellow fading woods Invite my song. It contains two of the best things in the poem, the first in the opening part, describing the swine in the acorn season, a delightful picture which must be given in full:--