will not speak of thee;
  These have not seen thee, these can never know thee,
  They cannot understand me.  Pass on then
  A term of eighteen years.  Ye would but laugh
  If I should tell ye how I heard in thought
  Those rhymes, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’
  ‘The Four-and-twenty Blackbirds’ ‘Banbury Cross,’
  ‘The Gander’ and ‘The man of Mitylene,’
  And all the quaint old scraps of ancient crones,
  Which are as gems set in my memory,
  Because she learn’d them with me.  Or what profits it
  To tell ye that her father died, just ere
  The daffodil was blown; or how we found
  The drowned seaman on the shore?  These things
  Unto the quiet daylight of your minds
  Are cloud and smoke, but in the dark of mine
  Show traced with flame.  Move with me to that hour,
  Which was the hinge on which the door of Hope,
  Once turning, open’d far into the outward,
  And never closed again.

                        I well remember,
  It was a glorious morning, such a one
  As dawns but once a season.  Mercury
  On such a morning would have flung himself
  From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced wings
  To some tall mountain.  On that day the year
  First felt his youth and strength, and from his spring
  Moved smiling toward his summer.  On that day,
  Love working shook his wings (that charged the winds
  With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound) and blew
  Fresh fire into the sun, and from within
  Burst thro’ the heated buds, and sent his soul
  Into the songs of birds, and touch’d far-off
  His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame
  Milder and purer.  Up the rocks we wound;
  The great pine shook with lovely sounds of joy,
  That came on the sea-wind.  As mountain brooks
  Our blood ran free:  the sunshine seem’d to brood
  More warmly on the heart than on the brow. 
  We often paused, and looking back, we saw
  The clefts and openings in the hills all fill’d
  With the blue valley and the glistening brooks,
  And with the low dark groves—­a land of Love;
  Where Love was worshipp’d upon every height,
  Where Love was worshipp’d under every tree—­
  A land of promise, flowing with the milk
  And honey of delicious memories
  Down to the sea, as far as eye could ken,
  From verge to verge it was a holy land,
  Still growing holier as you near’d the bay,
  For where the temple stood.  When we had reach’d
  The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop’d,
  I gather’d the wild herbs, and for her brows
  And mine wove chaplets of the self-same flower,
  Which she took smiling, and with my work there
  Crown’d her clear forehead.  Once or twice she told me
  (For I remember all things), to let grow
  The flowers that run poison in their veins. 
  She said, ‘The evil flourish in the world’;
  Then playfully she gave herself the lie: