“I wandered lonely”

It is time for my usual yearly tribute to English Romantic poet William Wordsworth and one of his most famous poems:

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 shew 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.

(—William Wordsworth, 1804-1807)

Daffodils beside Ullswater
Photo by Janet Wedgwood, see Ullswater.com

The poet and his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, were walking around Ullswater one April day in 1802 when they came upon a long stretch of daffodils beside Glencoyne Bay, on the southwest side. Ullswater is one of the most beautiful of the lakes in the English Lake District, 9 miles long with a 20-mile hike all the way around. A couple years later the poet drew from his sister’s journal description of that day to compose the first version of his poem. Later he added the second stanza and revised a word here and there. His wife, Mary, he credited with the lines “They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude” in the final stanza.

The first daffodils opening in my yard signal the beginning of spring to me. They were several weeks later this year than last year, but last year was a very dry and warm year, unusually so for us. I planted a lot more daffodil bulbs last fall and am waiting for them to bloom. The first year blooms are always later than those from bulbs that were planted years ago. Early spring can stretch for another month.