Now musing o’er the changing scene
  Farmers behind the tavern screen
  Collect; with elbows idly pressed
  On hob, reclines the corner’s guest,
  Reading the news to mark again
  The bankrupt lists or price of grain. 
  Puffing the while his red-tipt pipe
  He dreams o’er troubles nearly ripe,
  Yet, winter’s leisure to regale,
  Hopes better times, and sips his ale.
The Shepherd’s Calendar.  J. CLARE.

    Souls of poets dead and gone,
  What Elysium have ye known,
  Happy field or mossy cavern,
  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern.  J. KEATS.

  Now spurs the lated traveller apace
  To gain the timely inn.
Macbeth, Act iii.  Sc. 3.  SHAKESPEARE.

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.
Written on a Window of an Inn.  W. SHENSTONE.

INNOCENCE.

Hence, bashful cunning! 
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
Tempest, Act iii.  Sc. 1.  SHAKESPEARE.

O, white innocence,
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide
Thine awful and serenest countenance
From those who know thee not!
The Cenci, Act v.  Sc. 3.  P.B.  SHELLEY.

I never tempted her with word too large;
But, as a brother to his sister, showed
Bashful sincerity, and comely love.
Much Ado about Nothing, Act iv.  Sc. 1.  SHAKESPEARE.

And dallies with the innocence of love. Twelfth Night, Act ii.  Sc. 4.  SHAKESPEARE.

  Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
  Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;
  Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.
The Minstrel, Bk.  I.  J. BEATTIE.

  True, conscious honor is to feel no sin;
  He’s armed without that’s innocent within.
Imitation of Horace, Epistle 1.  Bk.  I.  A. POPE.

INSECTS.

  My banks they are furnished with bees,
  Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
A Pastoral Ballad, Pt.  II.  W. SHENSTONE.

  Here their delicious task the fervent bees
  In swarming millions tend:  around, athwart,
  Through the soft air, the busy nations fly,
  Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube,
  Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
  And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare
  The purple heath, or where the wild thyme grows,
  And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.
The Seasons:  Spring.  J. THOMSON.

  Inebriate of air am I,
  And debauchee of dew,
  Reeling, through endless summer days,
  From inns of molten blue.
Poems.  E. DICKINSON.

  O’er folded blooms
    On swirls of musk,
  The beetle booms adown the glooms
    And bumps along the dusk.
The Beetle.  J.W.  RILEY.