"Daffodils" (1804)

[wellinghall]

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Crap poem, but as it is St David's Day and I'm going into town, I'll go and pick one out of the garden.

[estiel.livejournal.com]

Decidedly *not* a crap poem, sir. Despite all the juvenile imitations that followed the prototype, it was revolutionary in its day. And if indeed you have them growing in your garden, you "little think what wealth" you possess.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The Model T Ford was revolutionary too, but I wouldn't want to have to drive one.

Though some of his contemporaries are very readable (Coleridge, Keats), Wordsworth gets right up my nose: I can't help wanting to set him to a weeks bulb-planting without a spade. Reactions to poetry are individual and to me, this one is terrible. It hits all the wrong buttons and uses vocabulary and imagery that is just wrong! wrong! wrong!

[estiel.livejournal.com]

I do understand. In cynical and sophisticated and hyper-ware schooldays, I would have gladly shoved Ww's face in the crap of which you speak. It was only later in the middle of clinical depression verging on utter despair that I read it differently.

[carrie2004.livejournal.com]

I like this poem. Today or anyday.

[romancinger.livejournal.com]

It's an OK poem. And my daffs are out on St David's day (I can't remember this ever happening before!)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The variety 'February Gold' is reasonably reliably open on March 1st even in relatively Northern climes, I've found. It's a dwarf form.

Down here in Cornwall this year February Gold was pretty much over this year before March 1st : we are into the daffodil main season now.