Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

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~P. B. Shelley.

VIII. DAFFODILS

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vale and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle in the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company:

I gazed and gazed, but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

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For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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-Wordsworth.

IX. A FOREST BY THE SEA

(From The Recollection)

We wandered to the pine forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,

And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one

Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,

Each seemed as 't were a little sky

Gulphed in a world below;

A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,

And purer than the day

In which the lovely forests grew

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views, which in our world above

Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love

Of that fair forest green.

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And all was interfused beneath
With an elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,

A softer day below.

60

-P. B. Shelley.

X. SELECTION FROM

LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR

July 13, 1798

Five years have past; five summers with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a sweet inland murmur.-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

These beauteous Forms,

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A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe,
Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind
"This thing I like my sister may not do,
For she is little, and I must be kind”.

Thus boyish will the nobler mastery learned
Where inward vision over impulse reigns,
Widening its life with separate life discerned,
A like unlike, a self that self restrains.

His

years with others must the sweeter be For those brief days he spent in loving me→

V

His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy

Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;
My doll seemed lifeless, and no girlish toy
Had any reason when my brother came.

I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling
Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop,
Or watched him winding close the spiral string
That looped the orbits of the humming-top.

Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought
Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil;
My aëry-picturing fantasy was taught
Subjection to the harder, truer skill

That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-tracked line,
And by "What is", "What will be" to define.

-George Eliot.