Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/309

249 Soon as gentle breezes bring

News of winter's vanishing,

And the children build their bowers,

Sticking 'kerchief-plots of mold

All about with full-blown flowers,

Thick as sheep in shepherd's fold!

With the proudest Thou art there,

Mantling in the tiny square.

Often have I sighed to measure

By myself a lonely pleasure,

Sighed to think, I read a book

Only read perhaps by me;

Yet I long could overlook

Thy bright coronet and Thee,

And thy arch and wily ways,

And thy store of other praise.

Blithe of heart, from week to week

Thou dost play at hide-and-seek;

While the patient Primrose sits

Like a Beggar in the cold,

Thou, a Flower of wiser wits,

Slipp'st into thy shelter'd hold;

Bright as any of the train

When ye all are out again.