Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

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.

--_Wordsworth._

A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD.

They say that God lives very high:
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see God. And why?

And if you dig down in the mines
You never see him in the gold,
Though, from him, all that's glory shines.

God is so good, he wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across his face--
Like secrets kept for love untold.

But still I feel that his embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place:

As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses' pressure,
Half waking me at night; and said,
"Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"

--_Mrs. Browning._

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.[13]

Am I a king that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong:
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,
When in the summer time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.

There by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,
Have, by a hearth-stone found a home at last,
And whisper of the past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide.
But, seated in this chair,
I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,
The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children's voices call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglo