"I, too, must yield, that oft amid those woes
Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose,
Such as you find on yonder sportive Green,
The squire's tall gate, and churchway-walk between,
Where loitering stray a little tribe of friends
On a fair Sunday when the sermon ends,"

are drawn from the pleasant villages in the Midlands (perhaps Allington,
where he was afterwards to minister), whither he rambled on his
botanising excursions from Belvoir Castle.

George Crabbe and his bride settled down in their apartments at Belvoir
Castle, but difficulties soon arose. Crabbe was without definite
clerical occupation, unless he read prayers to the few servants left in
charge; and was simply waiting for whatever might turn up in the way of
preferment from the Manners family, or from the Lord Chancellor. The
young couple soon found the position intolerable, and after less than
eighteen months Crabbe wisely accepted a vacant curacy in the
neighbourhood, that of Stathern in Leicestershire, to the humble
parsonage of which parish Crabbe and his wife removed in 1785. A child
had been born to them at Belvoir, who survived its birth only a few
hours. During the following four years at Stathern were born three
other children--the two sons, George and John, in 1785 and 1787, and a
daughter in 1789, who died in infancy.

Stathern is a village about four miles from Belvoir Castle, and the
drive or walk from one to the other lies through the far-spreading woods
and gardens surrounding the ducal mansion. Crabbe entered these woods
almost at his very door, and found there ample opportunity for his