THE PRINCESS HAS COME.
HE white snow has gone from the vale and the mountain;
The ice from the river has melted away;
The hills far and near
Are less winterly drear,
And the buds of the hawthorn are peeping for May.
I hear a light footstep abroad in my garden;
Oh, stay, does the wind through the shrubbery blow?
There's warmth in the breeze,
And a song in the trees,
And the Princess of Springtime is coming, I know.
The crocus has lighted its lamp in the forest,
Though it shelters its flame with a close-drawn green hood;
The primrose peeps out,
With a shiver of doubt,
And wonders if winter has left us for good.
But hark, from afar comes the sound of a bugle!
Or is it the bee where the rose-bushes grow?
He loiters so long,
With such joy in his song,
That the Princess of Springtime is coming, I know.
The blackbird has climbed to the top of the cedar,
And there in the sunshine he whistles a strain.
'She's coming! She's here!'
Are his messages clear,
As squadrons of swallows sweep by in the lane.
Now the woodlands rejoice with the green-tinted hedges;
The young wheat peeps up and the blue sky looks down.
Then out and away!
Our respects we must pay,
When the Princess of Springtime is wearing her crown.
THE MISUNDERSTOOD POETS.
The village wiseacres of Cumberland, to whom the habits of the poet Wordsworth and his eccentric friend Coleridge were a mystery, had decided that they must be terrible scoundrels. One sage had seen Wordsworth looking fixedly at the moon; another had overheard him muttering in some strange language. Some thought him a conjuror; some a smuggler, from his perpetually haunting the sea-beach; while others were sure that he was a desperate French conspirator.
One day, while on a walking excursion, Coleridge met a woman, who, not knowing who he was, abused him to himself in unmeasured terms for some time. 'I listened,' wrote the poet to a friend, 'very particularly, appearing to approve all she said, exclaiming "Dear me!" two or three times; and, in fine, so completely won her heart by my civilities, that I had not courage enough to undeceive her.'
This hostility seems very ludicrous now; but at the time its effect was such, that the person who had the letting of Allfoxenden House refused point-blank to re-let it to Wordsworth.