BOOKS FOR NATURE LOVERS. 
43 
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 stretch’d in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay : 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 
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 ; 
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. 
W. Wordsworth. 
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever : 
and such are daffodils 
With the green world they live in. 
Keats, Endymion. 
Heigh ho ! daisies and buttercups, 
Fair yellow daffodils stately and tall, 
When the wind wakes how they rock in the grasses, 
And dance with the cuckoo-buds, slender and small. 
Jean Ingelow. 
BOOKS FOR NATURE LOVERS. 
Of the many books interesting to nature-lovers which lie upon our table, the 
fairest to the eye is certainly Lady Lindsay’s About Robins (Geo. Routledge & 
Sons). It is the work of a member of the Selborne Society, who seems animated 
by the true Selbornian spirit of ardent love of nature and righteous wrath against 
her desecrators. Lady Lindsay not only wields the deft pencil of an accomplished 
artist for pourtrayingin many spirited pictures the beautiful birds she has made the 
subject of her monograph, but has given us a very interesting anthology of the 
Robin selected from a number of poets ranging from Chaucer to Christina Rossetti, 
a quaint collection of nursery rhymes and [Robinical] traditions, and a delightful 
gathering of old prose legends on the same subject. One cannot imagine a more 
charming book as a present either for a child or a “grown-up” ; and our only 
regret is that we have not space to transfer to our own pages some of the many 
beautiful stories which it contains. The following quotation, which accompanies 
a kindly mention of the Selborne Society’s work, shows a distinct refusal to accept 
“ The .Milliner’s scheme of Creation ” : — “ It is fervently to be hoped that, in 
time, ladies will altogether give up the habit of wearing these little birds, stuffed, 
on their hats and gowns. For my own part, I would as lief wear a stuffed village 
child, or what to many would seem yet more horrible, a carefully-prepared defunct 
pug dog ! ” 
