65
  —­That smile forbids the thought; for on thy face
  Smiles are beginning, like the beams of dawn,
  To shoot and circulate; smiles have there been seen;
  Tranquil assurances that Heaven supports
  The feeble motions of thy life, and cheers 70
  Thy loneliness:  or shall those smiles be called
  Feelers of love, put forth as if to explore
  This untried world, and to prepare thy way
  Through a strait passage intricate and dim? 
  Such are they; and the same are tokens, signs, 75
  Which, when the appointed season hath arrived,
  Joy, as her holiest language, shall adopt;
  And Reason’s godlike Power be proud to own.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  The title from 1815 to 1845 was ’Address to my Infant Daughter, on being reminded that she was a Month old, on that Day’.  After her death in 1847, her name was added to the title.—­Ed.]

[Footnote B:  See Dryden’s poem, ’To the pious memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs. Anne Killigrew’, I. l. 15.—­Ed.]

The text of this poem was never altered.—­Ed.

* * * * *

THE KITTEN AND FALLING LEAVES [A]

Composed 1804.—­Published 1807

[Seen at Town-end, Grasmere.  The elder-bush has long since disappeared; it hung over the wall near the cottage:  and the kitten continued to leap up, catching the leaves as here described.  The Infant was Dora.—­J.  F.]

One of the “Poems of the Fancy.”  In Henry Crabb Robinson’s ’Diary, etc.’, under date Sept. 10, 1816, we find,

  “He” (Wordsworth) “quoted from ‘The Kitten and the Falling Leaves’ to
  show he had connected even the kitten with the great, awful, and
  mysterious powers of Nature.”

Ed.

  That way look, my Infant, [1] lo! 
  What a pretty baby-show! 
  See the Kitten on the wall,
  Sporting with the leaves that fall,
  Withered leaves—­one—­two—­and three—­5
  From the lofty elder-tree! 
  Through the calm and frosty [2] air
  Of this morning bright and fair,
  Eddying round and round they sink
  Softly, slowly:  one might think, 10
  From the motions that are made,
  Every little leaf conveyed
  Sylph or Faery hither tending,—­
  To this lower world descending,
  Each invisible and mute, 15
  In his wavering parachute.
——­But the Kitten, how she starts,
  Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts! [3]
  First at one, and then its fellow
  Just as light and just as yellow; 20
  There are many now—­now one—­
  Now they stop and there are none: 
  What intenseness of desire