one memorable midday with shortened shadows upon some solitary road.

Our fathers had friction of another kind: hardship at home, winters and
nights that were dark with a darkness we have abolished; springs that
brought an infinite releasing, illumination, and recolouring. None of us
has seen the sight, or breathed the air, or heard those emancipated
voices. The bloom, the birds, the ifted sky! Bright nights and glowing
houses have surely robbed us of that variety, and all these untimely
fruits and flowers have suppressed even the small privations of a winter
in disguise.

In those days Englishmen had to breast the times as they were. They had
the privilege of their latitude--vigorous and rigorous seasons. They had
a year full of change--their time was stretched whether with impatience
or with patience, with conflict or with felicity. Their salt meats were
not the worst of it; there was the siege of darkness, the captivity of
cold, the threat of storm, and the labour to close with the closing
enemy, to break ways and save animals alive, and keep the laws in force
in the street in the long and secret nights. From such a season of
winter at home, winter well known, men broke free to hail their
daffodils. They found them, short, strong, and shivering, in the still
open and undefended woods. In the springs before Chaucer, and earlier
than the day of the first spring lyric, in the same places grew the keen
wild flowers as now; but they assuredly were marked with another welcome;
they made memories; this year's wild harvest was not confused with that
of last year, or of half-a-score of years gone by. Distance of vital
time set the springs far apart, and made the daffodils strangers.

They were greeted with the courtesy due to strangers, so fresh must have
been the senses of the villager, and of the citizen of the village town.