Bright Flower! for by that name at last, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, That breath'st with me in sun and air, 1805. IX. THE GREEN LINNET. BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed In this sequestered nook how sweet And birds and flowers once more to greet, One have I marked, the happiest guest Hail to Thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion! And this is thy dominion. While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, A Life, a Presence like the Air, Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, There! where the flutter of his wings My dazzled sight he oft deceives, As if by that exulting strain He mocked and treated with disdain The voiceless Form he chose to feign, While fluttering in the bushes. 1803. Up with me! up with me into the clouds For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds! With clouds and sky about thee ringing, I have walked through wildernesses dreary And to-day my heart is weary; Had I now the wings of a Faery, Up to thee would I fly. There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine; Lift me, guide me high and high To thy banqueting-place in the sky. Joyous as morning, Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth To be such a traveller as I. Happy, happy Liver, With a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with us both! Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done. 1805. XI. TO THE SMALL CELANDINE.* [WRITTEN at Town-end, Grasmere. It is remarkable that this flower, coming out so early in the spring as it does, and so bright and beautiful, and in such profusion, should not have been noticed earlier in English verse. What adds much to the interest that attends it is its habit of shutting itself up and opening out according to the degree of light and temperature of the air.] PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Eyes of some men travel far For the finding of a star; * Common Pilewort. Up and down the heavens they go, Modest, yet withal an Elf Bold, and lavish of thyself; Since we needs must first have met I have seen thee, high and low, Thirty years or more, and yet 'Twas a face I did not know; Thou hast now, go where I may, Fifty greetings in a day. Ere a leaf is on a bush, In the time before the thrush When we've little warmth, or none. Poets, vain men in their mood! Travel with the multitude: Never heed them; I aver That they all are wanton wooers; But the thrifty cottager, Who stirs little out of doors, |