Dry summer dust, in fearefull whisp’rings stir’d,
As loth to waken any singing bird.
Such passages as these must be admired by every lover of nature, but the poet will always be doubly dear to those who have lived amongst the scenes he describes so tenderly and so faithfully. My own feeling of indebtedness to one whose poetry had given a sort of sacredness to his native haunts was thus expressed when I was in clerical charge of the Tamar side of Tavistock, more than thirty years ago:—
Nature’s true Poet, blest with fancies sweet,
And voice as swift and changeful as our brooks,
We country swains cast often wondering looks
On those great singers that around thee meet;
For Spenser, Sidney, thy chief teachers were,
And Wither, Drayton, Jonson, called thee friend;
And, like enough, kind Shakespere did commend