Spring has well and truly arrived. Birds are feverishly gathering moss for their nests, bees are getting drunk on blossom nectar and daffodils are lighting the roadside verges with sunshine. I have been getting out with my camera as much as I can rather than spending time indoors at my desk and I am very behind with blogging and replying to comments. Please bear with me – spring fever will wear off eventually. In the meantime, this is the first of a series of short posts celebrating the arrival of this most hopeful of seasons.
I know this poem has become cliché, but really it is so beautiful I can’t think of any reason not to enjoy it again, and again.
Daffodils
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.
– William Wordsworth