We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie, In "fortunate parallels!" Butterflies, Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly Or marjoram, kept making peacock's eyes:
Song-birds darted about, some inky As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds; Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky— They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!
But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes, Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem; They need no parasols, no galoshes; And good Mrs. Trimmer [13] she feedeth them.
Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst his heather) That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms; And snapt—(it was perfectly charming weather)— Our fingers at Fate and her goddess glooms:
And Willie 'gan sing—(O, his notes were fluty; Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea)— Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty, Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry:"
Bowers of flowers encountered showers In William's carol (O love my Willie!) When he bade sorrow borrow from blithe Tomorrow I quite forget what—say a daffodilly:
A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow," I think occurred next in his nimble strain; And clay that was "kneaden" of course in Eden— A rhyme most novel, I do maintain:
Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories, And all least furlable things got "furled;" Not with any design to conceal their glories, But simply and solely to rhyme with "world."
O, if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together this genial weather, And carted, or carried on wafts away, Nor ever again trotted out—ay me! How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!
CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY.