I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek. 
  That hath but oon hole for to sterte to.
Preamble, Wyves Tale of Bath.  CHAUCER.

  When now, unsparing as the scourge of war,
  Blast follow blasts and groves dismantled roar;
  Around their home the storm-pinched cattle lows,
  No nourishment in frozen pasture grows.
The Farmer’s Boy:  Winter.  R. BLOOMFIELD.

Rural confusion! on the grassy bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip
The circling surface.  In the middle droops
The strong laborious ox, of honest front,
Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides
The troublous insects lashes with his tail,
Returning still.
The Seasons:  Summer.  J. THOMSON.

              Tossed from rock to rock,
  Incessant bleatings run around the hills. 
  At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks
  Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed,
  Head above head:  and ranged in lusty rows,
  The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.
The Seasons:  Summer.  J. THOMSON.

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? 
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Essay on Man, Epistle I.  A. POPE.

Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets, hail!... 
Delicious is your shelter to the soul,
As to the hunted hart the sallying spring,
Or stream full-flowing, that his swelling sides
Laves, as he floats along the herbaged brink.
The Seasons:  Autumn.  J. THOMSON.

A poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,
Did come to languish;...
... and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.
As You Like It, Act ii.  Sc. 1.  SHAKESPEARE.

Cruel as Death, and hungry as the Grave! 
Burning for blood! bony, and gaunt, and grim! 
Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;
And, pouring o’er the country, bear along,
Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snows. 
All is their prize.
The Seasons:  Winter.  J. THOMSON.

ANTHOLOGY.

Infinite riches in a little room. The Jew of Malta, Act i.  C. MARLOWE.

APPARITION.

Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts. Odyssey.  HOMER. Trans. of POPE.

  My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
  A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
  A noise of falling weights that never fell,
  Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand,
  Door-handles turned when none was at the door,
  And bolted doors that opened of themselves;
  And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe. The Ring.  A. TENNYSON.