Presently his vision is called to the springing lark: Just starting from the corn, he cheerly sings, And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings; Still louder breathes, and in the face of day Mounts up and calls on Giles to mark his way.
Close to his eye his hat he instant bends And forms a friendly telescope that lends Just aid enough to dull the glaring light And place the wandering bird before his sight, That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along; Lost for a while yet pours a varied song; The eye still follows and the cloud moves by, Again he stretches up the clear blue sky, His form, his motions, undistinguished quite, Save when he wheels direct from shade to light.
In the end he falls asleep, and waking refreshed picks up his poles and starts again brushing round.
Harvesting scenes succeed, with a picture of Mary, the village beauty, taking her share in the work, and how the labourers in their unwonted liveliness and new-found wit Confess the presence of a pretty face.
She is very rustic herself in her appearance:-- Her hat awry, divested of her gown, Her creaking stays of leather, stout and brown: Invidious barrier! why art thou so high, When the slight covering of her neck slips by, Then half revealing to the eager sight Her full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white?
The leather stays have no doubt gone the way of many other dreadful things, even in the most rustic villages in the land; not so the barbarous practice of docking horses' tails, against which he protests in this place when describing the summer plague of flies and the excessive sufferings of the domestic animals, especially of the poor horses deprived of their only defence against such an enemy.

At his own little farm there was yet another plague in the form of an old broken-winged gander, "the pest and tryant of the yard," whose unpleasant habit it was to go for the beasts and seize them by the fetlocks.

The swine alone did not resent the attacks but welcomed them, receiving the assaults as caresses, and stretching themselves out and lying down and closing their pigs' eyes, they would emit grunts of satisfaction, while the triumphant bird, followed by the whole gabbling flock, would trample on the heads of their prostrate foes.
"Autumn" opens bravely: Again the year's decline, 'midst storms and floods, The thund'ring chase, the yellow fading woods Invite my song.
It contains two of the best things in the poem, the first in the opening part, describing the swine in the acorn season, a delightful picture which must be given in full:-- No more the fields with scattered grain supply The restless tenants of the sty; From oak to oak they run with eager haste, And wrangling share the first delicious taste Of fallen acorns; yet but thinly found Till a strong gale has shook them to the ground.
It comes; and roaring woods obedient wave: Their home well pleased the joint adventurers leave; The trudging sow leads forth her numerous young, Playful, and white, and clean, the briars among, Till briars and thorns increasing fence them round, Where last year's mould'ring leaves bestrew the ground, And o'er their heads, loud lashed by furious squalls, Bright from their cups the rattling treasure falls; Hot thirsty food; whence doubly sweet and cool The welcome margin of some rush-grown pool, The wild duck's lonely haunt, whose jealous eye Guards every point; who sits prepared to fly, On the calm bosom of her little lake, Too closely screened for ruffian winds to shake; And as the bold intruders press around, At once she starts and rises with a bound; With bristles raised the sudden noise they hear, And ludicrously wild and winged with fear, The herd decamp with more than swinish speed, And snorting dash through sedge and rush and reed; Through tangled thickets headlong on they go, Then stop and listen for their fancied foe; The hindmost still the growing panic spreads, Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds, Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap; Yet glorying in their fortunate escape, Their groundless terrors by degrees soon cease, And Night's dark reign restores their peace.
For now the gale subsides, and from each bough The roosting pheasant's short but frequent crow Invites to rest, and huddling side by side The herd in closest ambush seek to hide; Seek some warm slope with shagged moss o'erspread, Dried leaves their copious covering and their bed.
In vain may Giles, through gathering glooms that fall, And solemn silence, urge his piercing call; Whole days and nights they tarry 'midst their store, Nor quit the woods till oaks can yield no more.
It is a delightful passage to one that knows a pig--the animal we respect for its intelligence, holding it in this respect higher, more human, than the horse, and at the same time laugh at on account of certain ludicrous points about it, as for example its liability to lose its head.

Thousands of years of comfortable domestic life have failed to rid it of this inconvenient heritage from the time when wild in woods it ran.

Yet in this particular instance the terror of the swine does not seem wholly inexcusable, if we know a wild duck as well as a pig, especially the duck that takes to haunting a solitary woodland pool, who, when intruded on, springs up with such a sudden tremendous splash and flutter of wings and outrageous screams, that man himself, if not prepared for it, may be thrown off his balance.
Passing over other scenes, about one hundred and fifty lines, we come to the second notable passage, when after the sowing of the winter wheat, poor Giles once more takes up his old occupation of rook-scaring.