"Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,-- Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,-- Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top, Breathing the reek of withered reeds, or the drifted and sodden Splendors of woodland, as whoso piously groaneth in spirit: 'Vanity, verily; yea, it is vanity, let me forsake it!'" But as the light of day enters some populous city, Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal, High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gas-lamps-- All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in Narrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys:-- He that goes forth to his walks, while speeding to the suburb, Sees sights only peaceful and pure; as laborers settling Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber; Humble market-carts, coming in, bringing in, not only Flower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon after Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters Up at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the doorway, School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel, Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly tripping;... Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires; So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric-- All its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway out-works-- Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty. (ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH: _The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_. 1848.) Clough's hexameters are quite unlike any others in English poetry, both in their metrical quality and in their use for serio-comic verse. As Matthew Arnold observed, they are "excessively, needlessly rough," but their free, garrulous effect has a charm of its own. Clough also wrote some hexameters intended to be strictly quantitative. (For a detailed criticism of the verse of the _Bothie_, see Robert Bridges's _Milton's Prosody_, 1901 ed., Appendix J.)