A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power

Some apprehension ;

Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;

Or stray invention.

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And all day long I number yet,

All seasons through, another debt,

Which I, wherever thou art met,

To thee am owing;

An instinct call it, a blind sense;

A happy, genial influence,

Coming one knows not how, nor whence,

Nor whither going.

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Oft on the dappled turf at ease

I sit, and play with similes,

Loose types of things through all degrees,

Thoughts of thy raising:

And many a fond and idle name

I give to thee, for praise or blame,

As is the humour of the game,

While I am gazing.

A nun demure of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,

1 See, in Chaucer and the elder Poets, the honours formerly paid

to this flower.

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Bright Flower! for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,

I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet silent creature!

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That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair

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My heart with gladness, and a share

Of thy meek nature

TO THE DAISY.

BRIGHT Flower! whose home is everywhere,
Bold in maternal Nature's care,

And all the long year through the heir

And Thou would'st teach him how to find

A shelter under every wind,

A hope for times that are unkind
And every season?

Thou wander'st the wide world about,
Unchecked by pride or scrupulous doubt,
With friends to greet thee, or without,

Yet pleased and willing;
Meek, yielding to the occasion's call,
And all things suffering from all,

Thy function apostolical

In peace fulfilling.

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20

1802.

WHEN TO THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE BUSY
WORLD.

WHEN, to the attractions of the busy world,
Preferring studious leisure, I had chosen.
A habitation in this peaceful Vale,

Sharp season followed of continual storm
In deepest winter; and, from week to week,
Pathway, and lane, and public road, were clogged
With frequent showers of snow.

Upon a hill
At a short distance from my cottage, stands
A stately Fir-grove, whither I was wont
To hasten, for I found, beneath the roof
Of that perennial shade, a cloistral place
Of refuge, with an unincumbered floor.
Here, in safe covert, on the shallow snow,
And, sometimes, on a speck of visible earth,
The redbreast near me hopped; nor was I loth
To sympathise with vulgar coppice birds
That, for protection from the nipping blast,
Hither repaired. - A single beech-tree grew
Within this grove of firs! and, on the fork
Of that one beech, appeared a thrush's nest;
A last year's nest, conspicuously built
At such small elevation from the ground
As gave sure sign that they, who in that house
Of nature and of love had made their home
Amid the fir-trees, all the summer long

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Dwelt in a tranquil spot. And oftentimes,

A few sheep, stragglers from some mountain-flock,
Would watch my motions with suspicious stare,
From the remotest outskirts of the grove,
Some nook where they had made their final stand,

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