The trees that grow upon the shore,
Have grown a hundred years or more;
So long there is no knowing.

Old Daniel Dobson does not know
When first these trees began to grow;

But still they grew, and grew, and grew,
As if they'd nothing else to do,

But ever to be growing.

The impulses of air and sky

Have rear'd their stately heads so high, And clothed their boughs with green; Their leaves the dews of evening quaff,And when the wind blows loud and keen, I've seen the jolly timbers laugh,

And shake their sides with merry glee-
Wagging their heads in mockery.

Fix'd are their feet in solid earth,
Where winds can never blow;

But visitings of deeper birth

Have reach'd their roots below.
For they have gain'd the river's brink,
And of the living waters drink.

There's little Will, a five years' child

He is my youngest boy;

To look on eyes so fair and mild,

It is a very joy:—

He hath conversed with sun and shower,

And dwelt with every idle flower,

As fresh and gay as them.
He loiters with the briar rose,—
The blue-bells are his play-fellows,

That dance upon their slender stem.

And I have said, my little Will,
Why should not he continue still
A thing of Nature's rearing?
A thing beyond the world's control,—
A living vegetable soul,—

No human sorrow fearing.

It were a blessed sight to see
That child become a Willow-tree,
His brother trees among.

He'd be four times as tall as me,
And live three times as long.

TO THE SMALL CELANDINE.

William Wordsworth.

PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,

They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,

'Tis the little Celandine.

Eyes of some men travel far

For the finding of a star;

Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,

Little Flower - I'll make a stir.
Like a sage astronomer.

Modest, yet withal an Elf

Bold, and lavish of thyself;

Since we needs must first have met
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
'Twas a face I did not know;
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings in a day.

Ere a leaf is on a bush,

In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about her nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless Prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,

When we've little warmth, or none.

Poets, vain men in their mood!

Travel with the multitude:

Never heed them; I aver

That they all are wanton wooers;

But the thrifty cottager,

Who stirs little out of doors,
Joys to spy thee near her home;
Spring is coming, Thou art come!

Comfort have thou of thy merit,
Kindly, unassuming Spirit!
Careless of thy neighborhood,

Thou dost show thy pleasant face

He now1 hired a lodging at the house of one Russel, a tailor in St. Bride's Churchyard, and undertook the education of Edward and John Philips, his sister's sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took [1641] a house and garden in Aldersgate

In 1640, at the age of 32.

Street, which was not then so much out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.

Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapors away his patriotism in a private boarding-school. This is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.

It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.

The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that treat of physical subjects, such as the