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do not mean a broad carriage-road lane, but one of those lovely little narrow winding dingles, arched over with Wild-briar and Woodbine, where the air is full of perfume and the banks bright with flowers. How refreshing it is to step into such an one, from the sunny and shadeless fields, to sit beneath the hedge of Hawthorn and Hazel-bushes,
'Mong the gay weeds and verdant grass; while high
Into the slumbering air majestic trees
Rear their proud leafy crests.—Below,
Singing along its shallow pebbly bed,
Sparkles a little rivulet, whose voice
Tells soothingly of Summer's parching thirst
In its cool wave allayed; and murmurs oft
Its one unvaried tune, till listening ear
Of weary wayfarer grows less acute,
And, lulled by its soft music, he is lapped
In some sweet dream of pleasant drowsyhead.
Spenser paints a scene like this in language like the colouring of Claude:
Then gan the shepheard gather into one
His straggling goates, and drave them to a foord,
Whose cerule streame, rombling in pible stone,
Crept under mosse as greene as any goord.
Now had the sun halfe heaven overgone,
When he his heard back from that water foord
Drave, from the force of Phœbus' boyling ray,
Into thick shadowes, there themselves to lay.
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