1. The child is father, etc. These lines are from a short poem by Wordsworth, entitled "My Heart leaps up":

"My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky.

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety."

Compare with Milton's lines in 'Paradise Regained,' Bk. IV:

"The childhood shows the man

As morning shows the day."

2. apparelled. From Fr. pareil, Lat. parilis. Other English words as pair, compare, etc., are similarly derived. To apparel is strictly to pair, to suit, to put like to like.

3. tabor.

From Old Fr. tabour, Fr. tambour. Compare Eng. tambourine. Originally from the root tap, Gr. tup, to strike lightly. An ancient musical instrument, - a small one-ended drum having a handle projecting from the frame, by which it was held in the left hand, while it was beaten with a stick held in the right hand.

4. the cataracts. The poet has probably in mind the "ghills" or falls of his own lake country. The metaphor which he uses is a bold one. 5. the echoes. Compare with a similar line by Shelley:

"Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains."

— Adonais, 127.

6. the fields of sleep. "The yet reposeful, slumbering country side." "The fields that were dark during the hours of sleep."— Knight.

- Hales.

7. jollity. Merriment. From Lat. jovialis. See Milton's 'L'Allegro,' 26:

8. May. May, with the poets, is the month of gayety. The older poetry especially is full of May raptures. Chaucer says:

9. coronal.

"For May will have no sluggardy a-night:
The season pricketh every gentle heart,
And maketh him out of his sleep to start."

A crown of flowers, a chaplet.

As at the Roman banquets. On such occasions it was usual for the host to give chaplets to his guests. Festoons of flowers were also sometimes hung over their necks and breasts. The chaplet, or coronal, was regarded as a cheerful ornament and symbol of festivity.

10. the babe leaps up. That is for joy. See the poem, "My heart leaps up," on page 46.

11. there's a tree. Compare this thought with that contained in the following lines:

ser,

"Only, one little sight, one plant,

whene'er the leaf grows there

Its drop comes from my heart, that's all."

From Fr. pensée, thought; penname, thought or fancy, from its

12. pansy. The flower of thought. to think. "It probably derived its fanciful appearance.” — Nares. Another derivation of the word is from panacea, meaning all-heal, a name given by the Greeks to a plant which was popularly supposed to cure diseases and dispel sorrow. The notion that the pansy is a cure for grief is shown in its common English name, heart's-ease.

13. Our birth is but a sleep. The idea of pre-existence was a favorite one of the ancient philosophers. The doctrine of metempsychosis, a form of the same idea, was held by the ancient Egyptians and is still maintained by the Buddhists. Tennyson says:

"As old mythologies relate,

Some draught of Lethe might await

The slipping through from state to state.

"And if I lapsed from nobler place,
Some legend of a fallen race
Alone might hint of my disgrace."-

Two Voices.

14. Behold the child. Pope gives a similar picture:

"Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite."— Essay on Man.

When Wordsworth wrote of

"A six years' darling of a pigmy size,"

he probably had in mind Hartley Coleridge, who was then a child of that age. See his poem "To Hartley Coleridge, Six Years Old."

15. humorous stage. See Shakespeare's lines beginning "All the world's a stage," "As You like It," Act ii, sc. 7. The word humorous has here a special sense, such as is used by Ben Jonson in his "Every Man in his Humor."

16. best philosopher . . . mighty prophet! seer blest! Stopford Brooke says: "These expressions taken separately have scarcely any recognizable meaning. By taking them all together, we feel rather than see that Wordsworth intended to say that the child, having lately come from a perfect existence, in which he saw truth directly, and was at home with God, retains, unknown to us, that vision; — and, because he does, is the best philosopher, since he sees at once that which we through philosophy are endeavoring to reach; is the mighty prophet, because in his actions and speech he tells unconsciously the truths he sees, but the sight of which we have lost; is more closely haunted by God, more near to the immortal life, more purely and brightly free because he half shares in the pre-existent life and glory out of which he has come.". Theology in the English Poets.

17. Fallings from us, vanishings. "Fits of utter dreaminess and abstraction, when nothing material seems solid, but everything mere mist and shadow."- Hales.

18. Blank misgivings. Compare Tennyson, "Two Voices":

"Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams;

"Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare."

19. The clouds that gather.

Compare these lines with the following

from Wordsworth's "Excursion":

"Ah! why in age

Do we revert so fondly to the walks

Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns
The dear memorial footsteps unimpair'd
Of her own native vigor, thence can hear
Reverberations and a choral song,
Commingling with the incense that ascends
Undaunted toward the imperishable heavens,
From her own lonely altar ? "

THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS.

WE walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;

And Matthew1 stopped, he looked, and said, 'The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering gray;

As blithe a man as you could see

On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,

And by the steaming rills,

We travelled merrily, to pass

A day among the hills.

'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun :

Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop,
And fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top,

To me he made reply:

'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this which I have left

Full thirty years behind.

And just above yon slope of corn
Such colors, and no other,

Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.

With rod and line I sued the sport

Which that sweet season gave,

And, to the church-yard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter's grave.

Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

The pride of all the vale:

And then she sang; - she would have been

A very nightingale.

Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

And yet I loved her more,

For so it seemed, than till that day

I e'er had loved before.

And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the churchyard yew,

A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,

It was a pure delight!

No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.