Wouldn't it be a nice thing now to be able to take some poor English lady who has been compelled to live all the early months of each year in the south, among hot-house sort of things, and just to show her for a minute a little English village in the real spring time, such as she must have known when she was a girl, with the daffodils in the cottage gardens, and the young leaves on the elm and the hawthorn.
"The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols"
William Black
Beneath the orchard branches he could see his children and Norah playing among the daffodils that grew wild in the grass; the light all about them was faintly blue and unceasingly tremulous and he stood watching, listening, smiling, thinking.
"The Devil's Garden"
W. B. Maxwell
As he light-heartedly strode away across the undulations of blossoming gorse, fragments of song from his favorite poets chased one another through his brain; and somehow they were all connected with the glad opening out of the year-"And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils"-"Along the grass sweet airs are blown, our way this day in spring"-"And in the gloaming o' the wood, the throssil whistled sweet"-Mangan could sing no more than a crow; but he felt as if he were singing; there was a kind of music in the long stride, the quick pulse, the deep inhalations of the delicious air.
"Prince Fortunatus"
William Black