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The harvest days are come again;
The vales are surging with the grain;

The merry work goes on amain ;

Pale streaks of cloud scarce veil the blue,

Against the golden harvest hue

The Autumn trees look fresh and new;

Wrinkled brows relax with glee,
And aged life they laugh to see
The sickness follow o'er the lea;

I see the little kerchief'd maid,
With dimpling cheek and bodice staid,
Mid the stout striplings half afraid;

Her red lip and her soft blue eye
Mate the poppy's crimson dye
And the cornflowers waving by;

I see the sire with bronzed chest ;
Mad babes amid the blithe unrest
Seem leaping from the mother's breast;

The mighty youth and supple child
Go forth, the yellow sheaves are piled,
The toil is mirth, the mirth is wild!

Old head and sunny forehead peers
O'er the warm sea, or disappears,
Drown'd amid the waving ears;

Barefoot urchins run, and hide
In hollows, 'twixt the corn, or glide
Towards the tall sheaf's sunny side;

Lusty pleasures, hob-nail'd fun,
Throng into the noonday sun,
And mid the merry reapers run.

Draw the clear October out;
Another and another bout,

Then back to labour with a shout!

The banded sheaves stand orderly

Against the purple Autumn sky,
Like armies of Prosperity.

Yet when the shadows eastwards seen

O'er the smooth shorn fallows lean,

And silence sits where they have been,

Amid the gleaners I will stay,
While the shout and roundelay
Faint off, and daylight dies away.

SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

F we would learn how merry were our anceftors, how thoroughly they gave themselves up to the enjoyment of their sports and paftimes, we could not have ftronger proof than is afforded in the fermon of Bishop Latimer, preached before King Edward the Sixth. The good Bishop there laments that the attractions of Robin Hood's day were greater than the charms of his eloquence.

"I came once myfelf," fays he, "to a place riding

a journey homeward from London, and fent word overnight into the town that I would preach there in the morning because it was a holy day, and I took my horfe and my company and went thither. (I thought I fhould have found a great company in the church.) When I came there, the church door was faft locked. I tarried there half-an-hour and more; at laft the key was found, and one of the parish comes to me and fays: This is a bufy day with us, we cannot heare you; this is Robin Hoodes daye; the parish is gone abroad to gather for

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Robin Hoode.' I thought my rochet would have been regarded, though I were not: but it would not serve, but was fayne to give place to Robin Hoode's men."

This ardent love of merriment extended upwards from the people; and if Latimer had to complain of the villagers' preference for Robin Hood, the venerable Thomas Cartwright certainly found the merry humour even of his clergy fomewhat in excess, for we find him faying, in his " Admonition to Parliament against the use of the Common Prayer,”—

"If there be a bear or a bull to be baited in the afternoon, or a jackanapes to ride on horseback, the minister hurries the fervice over in a shameful manner in order to be present at the show."

Among the numerous fports and paftimes of the "merrie days of England," those which were connected with the use of the bow, were long held in the highest efteem. From France our fathers imported the game of fhooting at the Popin-jay, thus referred to by an old writer

The wooden bird on horseback showing,
By beat of drum with pipers blowing,

They troop along huzzaing, tooting,

To hold their annual game of shooting.

The game as first instituted in France confifted of cruelly tethering a large bird in a field fo that it could fly only to a certain height, and the youth of the fecond order of nobles affembled and took aim at him with their bows and arrows, in presence of the nobility, gentry, and magiftracy. He who killed the bird was named "king of the archers" for the year, and the next two best

marksmen were named to the office of the king's lieutenant, and standard-bearer. When the fport was introduced into England, a wooden bird was fubftituted for the live one, and the prize of victory was awarded to the archer who could knock the "Papeguay" off the pole. Stow tells of a large Clofe called the "Tazell," which in his day was let to the cross-bow markers, where the citizens used to fhoot for prizes at the wooden bird. Henry the Eighth founded a perpetual corporation, called "the Order of St. George," the members of which were permitted for paftime-fake to practise shooting at all forts of marks and butts, and at "the game of the Popinjay." The skill of the English bowmen was tested on many a battle-field, and the feats of William Cloudeflie, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Clough, not less than those of Robin Hood, have been cherished in the ballads and traditions of our country. We have, however, only to treat of archery as one of the sports and pastimes of merry England. Bulwer has given a vivid description, in the "Laft of the Barons," of one of the gatherings of the people at these trials of skill:—

"Open fpaces for the popular games and diverfion were then numerous in the suburbs of the metropolis. Grateful to fome the fresh pool of Iflington; to others, the grass-bare fields of Finsbury; to all, the hedgeless plains of vaft Mile-end. But the fite to which we are now fummoned was a new and maiden holiday-ground, lately bestowed upon the towns-folk of Westminster, by the powerful Earl of Warwick. The ground was well fuited to the purpose to which it was devoted. But what particularly now demands our attention was a broad plot in the ground, dedicated to the noble

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