Ghost of Wordsworth at the Conservatory
The Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts seems to have the earliest blooming daffodils in town. Thanks to the people who maintain that bank of perennials every year.
As I was passing by those flowers yesterday, the following poem from William Wordsworth came to mind:
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 the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves behind 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.
This seems to be the single most-referenced poem about daffodils ever, and so my thoughts of it are not novel, but I don’t believe that the beauty of a daffodil comes from any claim to originality, but rather to its steady promise of warmer days to come.
The value of long rhythms in a constant place receives less praise than it deserves.
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