When, smitten by the morning ray,

I see thee rise, alert and

gay,

Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness:

And when, at dusk, by dews opprest
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.

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.

Child of the Year! that round dost run

Thy course, bold lover of the sun,
And cheerful when the day 's begun
As morning Leveret,

Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain ;

Dear shalt thou be to future men

As in old time; - thou not in vain,

Art Nature's favourite.

See, in Chaucer and the elder Poets, the honours for

merly paid to this flower.

III.

A WHIRL-BLAST from behind the hill
Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound:
Then all at once the air was still,

And showers of hailstones pattered round.
Where leafless Oaks towered high above,
I sat within an undergrove

Of tallest hollies, tall and green;
A fairer bower was never seen.
From year to year the spacious floor
With withered leaves is covered o'er,
And all the year the bower is green.
But see! where'er the hailstones drop,
The withered leaves all skip and hop,
There's not a breeze no breath of air

Yet here, and there, and every where

Along the floor, beneath the shade
By those embowering hollies made,
The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
As if with pipes and music rare
Some Robin Good-fellow were there,
And all those leaves, in festive glee,
Were dancing to the minstrelsy.

IV.

THE GREEN LINNET.

BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather,

In this sequestered nook how sweet

To sit upon my Orchard-seat!

And Birds and Flowers once more to greet, My last year's Friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest Guest

In all this covert of the blest:

Hail to Thee, far above the rest

In joy of voice and pinion, Thou, Linnet! in thy green array, Presiding Spirit here to-day,

Dost lead the revels of the May,

And this is thy dominion.

While Birds, and Butterflies, and Flowers Make all one Band of Paramours,

Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,

Art sole in thy employment;

A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair,
Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Upon yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,

Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

My sight he dazzles, half deceives,
A Bird so like the dancing Leaves;
Then flits, and from the Cottage eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;

As if by that exulting strain

He mocked and treated with disdain

The voiceless Form he chose to feign,

While fluttering in the bushes.