That unassuming commonplace

Of Nature, with the homely face

which has had due honour paid to it from Chaucer downwards, in Wither and in Burns; only it would not be like Wordsworth to dwell entirely on its more obvious qualities. Although he has devoted four considerable poems to its praise, he finds new things to bring to notice, one being that the daisy is a flower that we may find in bloom all through the year.

Thee winter in the garland wears

That thinly decks his few grey hairs;
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs
That she may sun thee:

Whole summer fields are thine by right;
And autumn, melancholy wight!
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane,
Pleased at his meeting thee again ;

Yet nothing daunted

Nor grieved if thou be set at nought;

And oft alone in nooks remote

We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.

This is like the flower itself-very homely and simple, and, above all, true in every particular.

Here and elsewhere (as in The Primrose of the Rock) the poet is not taken up with description, in an endeavour to rival a painter in painting the flower, its colour and behaviour, but rather in drawing moral and spiritual lessons from his meditations on its qualities. So with the well-known poem The Daffodils. It is the vision of ten thousand seen at a glance, fluttering and dancing in the breeze, tossing their heads in sprightly dance it is the picture of this jocund company-this, and no minute botanical investigation of its inflorescence -that gives him such a glut of pleasure. The very sight was a pleasure which he could and did renew at will.

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.

We have quoted enough to show Wordsworth's characteristic treatment of plants. Seldom do his observations disclose scientific knowledge, although occasionally he comes near it, as when he says:

Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft

Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard

That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake,

or refers to the royal fern in this wise

Chiefly that tall fern

So stately of the Queen Osmunda named.

His references to the stone-crop and convolvulus

are striking and correct :

That bright weed,

The yellow stone-crop, suffered to take root

Along the window's edge.

The cumbrous bind-weed, with its wreaths and bells,

Had twined about her two small rows of peas

And dragged them to the earth.

One of his most Tennysonian strokes is in The Cumberland Beggar, where he compares a wornout human being to

The dry remnant of a garden flower

Whose seeds are shed.

On the whole, we find him in this respect weaker than we expected when we began this inquiry. We must not, however, omit to call attention to his happy use of flowers for simple similes. Luke bore on his cheek "two steady roses that were five years old!" That is commonplace except for the way of putting it. Harry Gill's cheeks" were red as ruddy clover". This is new and felicitous. Of old Simon Lee it is said that "the centre of his cheek is red as a ripe cherry!"

CHAPTER VI

WORDSWORTH'S BIRDS

WORDSWORTH, although he is, as we have seen, in a very special sense, the poet of Nature, is not conspicuous for his knowledge of natural history as such. And yet, the curious thing is that in his early days, before he "found himself," he showed skill in mere descriptions without any high moral purpose; witness his Evening Walk, the writing of which was due to his consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as he was acquainted with them, and led to his making a resolution to supply in some degree this deficiency. His pictures of the cock and of the swan are minute to a fault :

Sweetly ferocious, round his native walks,
Pride of his sister-wives, the monarch stalks ;
Spur-clad his nervous feet and firm his tread;
A crest of purple tops the warrior's head.
Bright sparks his black and rolling eyeball hurls

in

Afar, his tail he closes and unfurls;

On tiptoe reared, he strains his clarion throat, Threatened by faintly-answering farms remote. Again with his shrill voice the mountain rings, While, flapped with conscious pride, resound his wings. Except it be Chaucer's superb picture of Chanticleer in the Nonnes Priestes Tale, there is nowhere any literature a portrait so minutely painted, so entirely drawn from the life as this of the barn-door cock, but it has no moral lesson; it is drawn merely for its own sake, for the pleasure of limning it with accuracy and force. A similar remark applies to Wordsworth's equally fine attempt in the same poem to depict a swan. This, though a long passage, must be quoted, because it shows how close an observer Wordsworth was, even at an early age, for he was not yet out of his teens.

"Tis pleasant near the tranquil lake to stray,
Where, winding on along some secret bay,
The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings

His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings;
The eye that marks the gliding creature sees

How graceful pride can be, and how majestic ease.

While tender cares and mild domestic loves
With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,
The female with a meeker charm succeeds,
And her brown little ones around her leads,
Nibbling the water-lilies as they pass,
Or playing wanton with the floating grass.