little rustic lodge, to a gently sloping valley, where were white
walls and rose-clustered gables of cottages peeping out from the
embosoming trees, that betrayed the village beauties they seemed loth
to hide. Then came the grey church-tower, dark with shrouding ivy;
then another clump of stately elms, tenanted by cawing rooks; then a
yellow stretch of bright meadow-land, dappled over with browsing kine
knee-deep in grass and flowers; then a deep pool that mirrored all,
and shone like silver; then more trees with floating shade, and
homesteads rich in wheat-stacks; then a willowy brook that sparkled
on merrily to an old mill-wheel, whose slippery stairs it lazily got
down, and sank to quiet rest in the stream below; then came, crowding
in rich profusion, wide-spreading woods and antlered oaks; and golden
gorse and purple heather; and sunny orchards, with their dark-green
waves that in Spring foamed white with blossoms; and then gently
swelling hills that rose to close the scene and frame the picture.

Such was the view from the Manor Green. And full of inspiration as
such a scene was, yet Mr. Verdant Green never accomplished (as far as
poetical inspiration was concerned) more than an "Address to the
Moon," which he could just as well have written in any other part of
the country, and which, commencing with the noble aspiration,

"O moon, that shinest in the heaven so blue,
I only wish that I could shine like you!"

and terminating with one of those fine touches of nature which rise
superior to the trammels of ordinary versification,

"But I to bed must be going soon,
So I will not address thee more, O moon!"