copse.
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  Pompous incumbrance!  A magnificence
  Useless, vexatious!  For the wily fox,
  Safe in the increasing number of his foes,
  Kens well the great advantage:  slinks behind
  And slily creeps through the same beaten track,
  And hunts them step by step; then views escaped
  With inward ecstasy, the panting throng
  In their own footsteps puzzled, foiled and lost. 
  So when proud Eastern kings summon to arms
  Their gaudy legions, from far distant climes
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  They flock in crowds, unpeopling half a world: 
  But when the day of battle calls them forth
  To charge the well-trained foe, a band compact
  Of chosen veterans; they press blindly on,
  In heaps confused, by their own weapons fall,
  A smoking carnage scattered o’er the plain. 
     Nor hounds alone this noxious brood destroy: 
  The plundered warrener full many a wile
  Devises to entrap his greedy foe,
  Fat with nocturnal spoils.  At close of day,
200
  With silence drags his trail; then from the ground
  Pares thin the close-grazed turf, there with nice hand
  Covers the latent death, with curious springs
  Prepared to fly at once, whene’er the tread
  Of man or beast unwarily shall press
  The yielding surface.  By the indented steel
  With gripe tenacious held, the felon grins,
  And struggles, but in vain:  yet oft ’tis known,
  When every art has failed, the captive fox
  Has shared the wounded joint, and with a limb
210
  Compounded for his life.  But if perchance
  In the deep pitfall plunged, there’s no escape;
  But unreprieved he dies, and bleached in air
  The jest of clowns, his reeking carcase hangs. 
     Of these are various kinds; not even the king
  Of brutes evades this deep devouring grave: 
  But by the wily African betrayed,
  Heedless of fate, within its gaping jaws
  Expires indignant.  When the orient beam
  With blushes paints the dawn; and all the race
220
  Carnivorous, with blood full-gorged, retire
  Into their darksome cells, there satiate snore
  O’er dripping offals, and the mangled limbs
  Of men and beasts; the painful forester 224
  Climbs the high hills, whose proud aspiring tops,
  With the tall cedar crowned, and taper fir,
  Assail the clouds.  There ’mong the craggy rocks,
  And thickets intricate, trembling he views
  His footsteps in the sand; the dismal road
  And avenue to death.  Hither he calls
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  His watchful bands; and low into the ground
  A pit they sink, full many a fathom deep. 
  Then in the midst a column high is reared,
  The butt of some fair tree; upon whose top
  A lamb is placed, just ravished from his dam. 
  And next a wall they build, with stones and earth
  Encircling round, and hiding from all view
  The dreadful precipice.  Now when