Daffodils

Wordsworth's "Daffodils". Ahh. I wanted to put up something cheery and happy here just to balance out all the negative chi of the previous posts. The first poem that came to mind was this. It resounds of JC and England and the Lake District and Grasmere. It brings to mind sunny days, fluffy white clouds, a certain familiar reprieve from everything else that's happening around you. Yet at the same time, its meaning has sort of changed for me now that I read it again, as my life changed since the last time I read it. As we learnt in Literature and Other Arts, our own biography influences the way we interpret art (and by extension, poetry). Simply put, without making too much of a deal of it, the past six weeks were supposedly my daffodils.

"Daffodils" (1804)

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).