When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses bound, Our hearts with loyal flames; When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free, Fishes that tipple in the deep, Know no such liberty.
When, like committed linnets, I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty, And glories of my KING; When I shall voice aloud, how good He is, how great should be; Enlargèd winds that curl the flood, Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free; Angels alone that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.
I wandered 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.
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.
When maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavour.
A month or more hath she been dead, Yet cannot I by force be led To think upon the wormy bed And her together.
A springy motion in her gait, A rising step, did indicate Of pride and joy no common rate, That flushed her spirit.
I know not by what name beside I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride, It was a joy to that allied, She did inherit.
Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feeling cool, But she was train'd in Nature's school, Nature had blest her.
A waking eye, a prying mind, A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, Ye could not Hester.