Now sunk the sun, now twilight sunk, and night Rode in her zenith; nor a passing breeze Sigh’d to the groves, which in the midnight air Stood motionless; and in the peaceful floods Inverted hung; for now the billow slept Along the shore, nor heav’d the deep, but spread A shining mirror to the moon’s pale orb, Which, dim and waning, o’er the shadowy cliffs, The solemn woods and spiry mountain tops Her glimmering faintness threw. Now every eye Oppress’d with toil, was drown’d in deep repose, Save that the unseen shepherd in his watch, Propt on his crook, stood listening by the fold, And gaz’d the starry vault and pendant moon. Nor voice nor sound broke on the deep serene But the soft murmur of swift gushing rills, Forth issuing from the mountain’s distant steep (Unheard till now, and now scarce heard) proclaimed All things at rest, and imag’d the still voice Of quiet whispering to the ear of night. For a curious coincidence compare Wordsworth’s lines written thirty years later: The song of mountain streams, unheard by day, Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way. John Langhorne was born at Kirby-Stephen in Westmoreland. His best poems were published in 1766, though his “Fables of Flora” did not appear till 1771. Langhorne had an enthusiastic personal love for Nature. He dwelt with rapture on stream and flower and field and sky.[402] His wish was, Oh let me still with simple nature live, My lowly field flowers on her altar lay; Enjoy the blessings that she meant to give And calmly waste my inoffensive day.[403] Or again, Slow let me climb the mountain’s airy brow; The green height gained, in museful rapture lie, Sleep to the murmur of the woods below Or look to nature with a lover’s eye.[404] His preference for Nature untouched by art is seen in the charming little “Fable”[405] showing the superiority of the wild rose to the more splendid cultivated rose. And in another “Fable” he says, Come let us leave the painted plain, This waste of flowers that palls the eye; The walks of nature’s wilder reign Shall please in plainer majesty.[406] That he had a tender feeling toward animals is shown by his poems on birds and by his protest against the cruelty of confining birds in cages. The most striking characteristic of Langhorne’s poems is his direct expression of the excellence of the gift that Nature’s hand bestows. A part of his excellent gift is the inspiration to poetry. The young shepherd was inspired with “poetic charms” as he wandered through the wild scenes By Yarrow’s banks or groves of Endermay. In his own experience The nameless charms of high poetic thought,