[Variant 1: 

1827.

  The May is come again:—­how sweet
  To sit upon my Orchard-seat! 
  And Birds and Flowers once more to greet,
    My last year’s Friends together: 
  My thoughts they all by turns employ;
  A whispering Leaf is now my joy,
  And then a Bird will be the toy
    That doth my fancy tether. 1807.

  And Flowers and Birds once more to greet, 1815.

The text of 1815 is otherwise identical with that of 1827.]

[Variant 2: 

1845.

  Upon ... 1807.]

[Variant 3: 

1845.

  While thus before my eyes he gleams,
  A Brother of the Leaves he seems;
  When in a moment forth he teems
  His little song in gushes:  1807.

  My sight he dazzles, half deceives,
  A Bird so like the dancing Leaves;
  Then flits, and from the Cottage eaves
    Pours forth his song in gushes; 1827.

  My dazzled sight the Bird deceives,
  A Brother of the dancing Leaves; 1832.

  The Bird my dazzled sight deceives, 1840.

  The Bird my dazzling sight deceives C.]

[Variant 4: 

1827.

  As if it pleas’d him to disdain
  And mock the Form which he did feign,
  While he was dancing with the train
    Of Leaves among the bushes. 1807.

  The voiceless Form he chose to feign, 1820.]

Of all Wordsworth’s poems this is the one most distinctively associated with the Orchard, at Town-end, Grasmere.  Dorothy Wordsworth writes in her Journal under date May 28th, 1802: 

“We sat in the orchard.  The young bull-finches in their pretty coloured raiment, bustle about among the blossoms, and poise themselves like wire-dancers or tumblers, shaking the twigs and dashing off the blossoms.”

Ed.

* * * * *

YEW-TREES

Composed 1803.—­Published 1815

[Written at Grasmere.  These Yew-trees are still standing, but the spread of that at Lorton is much diminished by mutilation.  I will here mention that a little way up the hill, on the road leading from Rosthwaite to Stonethwaite (in Borrowdale) lay the trunk of a Yew-tree, which appeared as you approached, so vast was its diameter, like the entrance of a cave, and not a small one.  Calculating upon what I have observed of the slow growth of this tree in rocky situations, and of its durability, I have often thought that the one I am describing must have been as old as the Christian era.  The Tree lay in the line of a fence.  Great masses of its ruins were strewn about, and some had been rolled down the hillside and lay near the road at the bottom.  As you approached the tree, you were struck with the number of shrubs and young plants, ashes, etc., which had found