Our woodland poet who on Nature’s breast
Lay wisely passive through the tranquil years,
Wrote of the comrade whom he loved the best
This praise: She gave me eyes, she gave me ears.
The jocund dance of wind-swept daffodils;
The marvel of the nest the sparrows made;
The secrets of the vales and of the hills
The child had slowlier learned without her aid.
For me, my best instructor in the spells
And wiles of Nature was a seven-years’ boy,
To whom she had revealed the soul that dwells
Beneath her careless outward robe of joy.
She knew him true; she made him one with her,
Her little prophet and interpreter.
[Illustration: “The jocund dance of wind-swept daffodils.”]