e bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
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

If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty
give him water to drink; for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his
head, and the Lord shall reward thee.

Proverbs, XXV.

TO THE DANDELION

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth--thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms that be.

Lowell

TRUE GREATNESS

On the evening of the twenty-second of May, 1509, two figures were
seated at the wide doorway of a handsome house in Florence. Lillo, a boy
of fifteen, sat on the ground, with his back against the angle of the
door-post, and his long legs stretched out, while he held a large book
open on his knee, and occasionally made a dash with his hand at an
inquisitive fly, with an air of interest stronger than that excited by
the finely-printed copy of Petrarch which he kept open at one place, as
if he were learning something by heart.

Romola sat nearly opposite Lillo, but she was not observing him. Her
hands were crossed on her lap, and her eyes were fixed absently on the
distant mountains: she was evidently unconscious of anything around her.
An eager life had left its marks upon her: the finely-moulded cheek had
sunk a little, the golden crown was less massive; but there was a
placidity on Romola's face which had never belonged to it in youth. It
is but once that we can know our worst sorrows, and Romola had known
them while life was new.

Absorbed in this way, she was not at first aware that Lillo had ceased
to look at his book, and was watching her with a slightly impatient air,
wh