haire, twires his beard [&c.]'. Here _twires_, as latest edition of
_O.E.D._ suggests, may be a misprint for _twirls_. Older dictionaries
give wrong and misleading definitions of this word; and a spurious
_twire_, to sing, was inferred from a misreading 'twierethe' for
'twitereth' in Chaucer's _Boethius_, III m. 2. Modern authorities only
allow _twire_, to peep, as in Shakespeare's 28th Sonnet,

'When sparkling stars twire not, thou gildst the even'


(whence some had foolishly supposed that _twire_ meant twinkle) and in
Ben Jonson, _Sad Shepherd_, II. 1, 'Which maids will twire at, 'tween
their fingers'. The verb is still in dialectal use: _E.D.D._ explains it
'to gaze wistfully or beseechingly'.

27. 'The tiny frogs
Go yerking'. (69)


#Yerk.# The intrans. verb is to kick as a horse. The trans. verb is
quoted from Massinger, Herrick, and Burns, who has 'My fancy yerkit up
sublime': i.e. roused, lashed.

28. 'There seems no heart in wood or wide'. (8)


#Wide# as a subst. is hardly recognized. Tennyson is quoted, 'The
waste wide of that abyss', but as _waste_ is a recognized substantive
the authority is uncertain.