I DREAMED that as I wandered by the way
Bare winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring
Along with a shelving bank of turf, which lay5
Under a corpse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as Thou mightiest in the dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets.
Daisies, that pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears.
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May,
And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day;

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any waken’ eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with a sober sheen.
I thought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come
That I might their present it O! to Whom?
— P.B. Shelley

Q:

What the poet saw growing along the banks were …………………

• 1
  a variety of flowers
• 2
  a variety of cows
• 3
  his fair eyes awakened
• 4
  a dazzling of sunshine