That our years are halting never;
  Quickly gone, and gone for ever,
  And would teach us thence to brave
  The conclusion in the grave;
  Whether it be these that give
  Strength and spirit so to live,
  Or the conquest best be made,
  By a sober course and staid,
  I would walk in such a way, Ms.]

[Variant 13: 

  ... joyousness.  Ms.]

[Variant 14: 

  From the things by ...  Ms.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  In the editions of 1807-1832 the title was ’The Kitten and the Falling Leaves’.—­Ed.]

* * * * *

SUB-FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Sub-Footnote a:  Dora Wordsworth died in July 1847.  Probably the change of text in 1849—­one of the latest which the poet made—­was due to the wish to connect this poem with memories of his dead daughter’s childhood, and her “laughing eye.”—­Ed.]

* * * * *

THE SMALL CELANDINE [A]

Composed 1804.—­Published 1807

[Grasmere, Town-end.  It is remarkable that this flower coming out so early in the spring as it does, and so bright and beautiful, and in such profusion, should not have been noticed earlier in English verse.  What adds much to the interest that attends it, is its habit of shutting itself up and opening out according to the degree of light and temperature of the air.—­I.  F.]

In pencil on opposite page “Has not Chaucer noticed it?”—­W.  W.

This was classed by Wordsworth among his “Poems referring to the Period of Old Age."-Ed.

  There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine,
  That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
  And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
  Bright as the sun himself, [1] ’tis out again!

  When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, 5
  Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,
  Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
  In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

  But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed
  And recognised it, though an altered form, 10
  Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
  And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

  I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
  “It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold: 
  This neither is its courage nor its choice, 15
  But its necessity in being old.

  “The sunshine may not cheer [2] it, nor the dew;
  It cannot help itself in its decay;
  Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.” 
  And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey. 20