BY BANK AND COPSE. 33 



1 The waves beside them danced, but they 

 Out-did 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 ; 



1 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." 



We recall too that it was of daffodils that Keats wrote 

 the now too hackneyed line, " A thing of beauty is a joy 

 for ever"; and the deliberate utterance of Mahomet, "He 

 that has two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for 

 some flower of the narcissus ; for bread is the food of the 

 body; but narcissus is food for the soul." Then, when 

 our emotional ardour has a little cooled, we may discuss 

 the many names of our favourite, such as "Lent rose," 

 "crown bells," "chalice-flower," and "daffadowndilly," 

 and whether this last be but a playful modification of 

 daffodil, or, as is credibly alleged, a corruption of saffron 

 lily. Then too the question arises whether this beautiful 

 flower is truly wild, and we note that its leaves have less 

 grey bloom upon them than those of the cultivated form ; 

 that the six floral leaves are of a paler yellow, and that the 

 lovely deep golden coronet in their centre has rectangular, 

 instead of rounded, lobings to its gracefully recurved 

 margin. Bulbous plants often spread far, and it is hard to 

 say where there may not have been a monastic garden or 

 the orchard of a mediaeval grange ; but the daffodil would 

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