32 THE PLANT-WORLD IN MARCH. 



Let us hasten on. A companion who knows the locality 

 has yet a treat in store. We push our way under the 

 ghostly dead-seeming boughs of some young larches, and 

 come out at the head of a slope facing south, a different 

 side of the wood from that on which we entered, and 

 there before us waves a sea of glorious daffodils. I know 

 few, if any, keener pleasure in store for the lover of wild 

 flowers, the whole year through. We may find many a 

 rarer plant than the Lent lily, as it is often called, the 

 yellow star-of-Bethlehem, for instance, is far less common ; 

 but there is but little comparison between the joyous glee 

 with which this sight fills one, and the merely intellectual 

 pleasure of a " rare find." Wordsworth's poem rises to our 

 lips, for this is the time for poetry and not for science ; 

 and, familiar as it is, we make no excuse for quoting it in 

 full. It is the verses of Wordsworth, the lover of nature, 

 that endear themselves to us rather than the courtly 

 conceits of Herrick, who could walk through the lovely 

 Devonshire lanes round his home at Dean Prior, lanes 

 draped in ferns and primroses, and complain of " this 

 dull Devonshire." 



" I wander'd lonely as a cloud 



That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 



When all at once I saw a crowd, 

 A host of golden daffodils, 



Beside the lake beneath the trees 



Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 



" Continuous as the stars that shine 



And twinkle on the milky-way, 

 They stretched in never-ending line 



Along the margin of a bay : 

 Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 

 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 



