"Approach and through the unlatticed window peep.
Nay, shrink not back, the inmate is asleep;
Sunk 'mid yon sordid blankets, till the sun
Stoop to the west, the plunderer's toils are done.
Loaded and primed, and prompt for desperate hand,
Rifle and fowling-piece beside him stand,
While round the hut are in disorder laid
The tools and booty of his lawless trade;
For force or fraud, resistance or escape
The crow, the saw, the bludgeon, and the crape;
His pilfered powder in yon nook he hoards,
And the filched lead the church's roof affords--
(Hence shall the rector's congregation fret,
That while his sermon's dry, his walls are wet.)
The fish-spear barbed, the sweeping net are there,
Dog-hides, and pheasant plumes, and skins of hare,
Cordage for toils, and wiring for the snare.
Bartered for game from chase or warren won,
Yon cask holds moonlight,[5] seen when moon was none;
And late-snatched spoils lie stowed in hutch apart,
To wait the associate higgler's evening cart."

Happily for Scott's fame, and for the world's delight, he did not long
pursue the unprofitable task of copying other men. _Rokeby_ appeared,
was coldly received, and then Scott turned his thoughts to fiction in
prose, came upon his long-lost fragment of _Waverley_ and the need of
conciliating the poetic taste of the day was at an end for ever. But his
affection for Crabbe never waned. In his earlier novels there was no
contemporary poet he more often quoted as headings for his chapters--and