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The Green Linnet by William Wordsworth

Analysis

"The Green Linnet" is a poem by William Wordsworth. A linnet is a type of small bird. This poem speaks about how beautiful the bird is and how welcoming it is to spring and May. The bird's voice is more beautiful than the rest and it stands out with "his back and body flings / Shadows and sunny glimmerings, / That cover him all over". However, even though he's beautiful, he's sometimes hard to find throughout all the bushes and trees. The bird is also carefree since it "Scattering thy gladness without care,". Wordsworth seems to wish he had these traits.

"The Green Linnet" is a five stanza poem with eight lines in each. It is rhymed as AAABCCCB. Such a unique rhyme scheme!. It is also written in iambic-tetrameter (two-feet with four meters) for eight syllables in each line.

Poem

The Green Linnet
By 

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring's unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year's friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here today,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:
A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

My dazzled sight he oft deceives,
A Brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes,
As if by that exulting strain
He mocked and treated with disdain
The voiceless Form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes.
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