Oh, happy, happy outset of my days!

Green springtide, April promise, glad new year

Of Being, which with earliest violets,

And lavish carol of clear-throated larks,

Fill'd all the march of life.—I 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'