No shadow of the coming days durst blot,
The flower-like face, so innocently fair,
As lip met lip, and lily arms, all bare,
Clung round him in a perfect lover's knot.
Was not this Anne the flame-like daffodil
Of Shakespeare's March, whose maiden beauty took
His senses captive? Thus the stripling brook
Mirrors a wild flower nodding by the mill,
Then grows a river in which proud cities look.
And with a land's load widens seaward still.
III.-CLEVE WOODS.
Sweet Avon glides where clinging rushes seem
To stay his course, and, in his flattering glass,
Meadows and hills and mellow woodlands pass,
A fairer world as imaged in a dream.
And sometimes, in a visionary gleam,
From out the secret covert's tangled mass.
The fisher-bird starts from the rustling grass,
A jewelled shuttle shot along the stream.
Even here, methinks, when moon-lapped shallows smiled
Round isles no bigger than a baby's cot,
Titania found a glowworm-lighted child,
Led far astray, and, with anointing hand
Sprinklmg clear dew from a forget-me-not,
Hailed him the Laureate of her Fairyland.
