In youth from rock to rock I went, 
From hill to hill, in discontent 
Of pleasure high and turbulent, 
               Most pleas’d when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,
My thirst at every rill can slake, 
And gladly Nature’s love partake 
               Of thee, sweet Daisy! 


                             2


When soothed a while by milder airs, 
Thee Winter in the garland wears 
That thinly shades his few grey hairs;
               Spring cannot shun 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;
If welcome once thou count’st it gain;
               Thou art not daunted, 
Nor car’st if thou be set at naught;
And oft alone in nooks remote 
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, 
               When such are wanted. 


                             3


Be Violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs chuse;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
               Her head impearling;
Thou liv’st with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
               The Poet’s darling. 


If to a rock from rains he fly, 
Or, some bright day of April sky, 
Imprison’d by hot sunshine lie 
               Near the green holly, 
And wearily at length should fare;
He need but look about, and there 
Thou art! a Friend at hand, to scare
               His melancholy. 


                             4


A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couch’d an hour, 
Have I derived from thy sweet power
               Some apprehension;
Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
               Or stray invention. 


If stately passions in me burn, 
And one chance look to Thee should turn, 
I drink out of an humbler urn 
               A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds 
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs 
               Of hearts at leisure. 


                             5


When, smitten by the morning ray, 
I see thee rise alert and gay,
Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
               With kindred motion:
At dusk, I’ve seldom mark’d thee press
The ground, as if in thankfulness 
Without some feeling, more or less,
               Of true devotion. 


And all day long I number yet, 
All seasons through another debt, 
Which I wherever thou art met, 
               To thee am owing;
An instinct call it, a blind sense;
A happy, genial influence, 
Coming one knows not how nor whence,
               Nor whither going. 


                             6


Child of the Year! that round dost run
Thy course, bold lover of the sun, 
And cheerful when the day’s begun 
               As morning Leveret, 
Thou long the Poet’s praise shalt gain:
Thou wilt be more belov’d by men
In times to come; thou not in vain 
               Art Nature’s Favorite.

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

To read more poems, click here.

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