I wandered lonely as a Cloud…

Spring just isn’t spring until I can share Wordsworth’s delight in daffodils. Poetry is experience distilled to its essence. Once you’ve enjoyed an experience through poetry, you’ll find that both experience and poem are enriched.

The daffodils are in full dress in our yard today, like scraps of sunlight scattered about. If you don’t have daffodils in your garden, do plan to plant some bulbs next fall. They’re absolutely easy-care, and they’ll reward you by multiplying year after year.

Enjoy!

Here is the 1815 poem by William Wordsworth:

I wandered 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 stretched 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.