CONTINUOUS AS THE STARS THAT SHINE

The scientists (and gardeners) tell us that spring will be late this year because we've had such a cold winter.  Good.  I love cold winters and there is a hard, white frost outside my window as I write.  As if Jack Frost has been out during the night coating every leaf and blade of grass with icing sugar.

But earlier this month, in Cornwall - I spotted some daffodils already growing by the road-side and so I lay down and took a photo (which isn't quite as good as I hoped it would be).

Never mind - it shows that wonderfully intense egg-yolk colour and gives me the opportunity to reproduce one of my favourite poems of all time.  And yes, yes - I realise that it's not nearly obscure enough to be trendy - but that's because it is brilliant and enduring.  Like a diamond.  Or maybe a yellow sapphire....

William Wordsworth

Daffodils

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.

"They flash upon that inward eye which is the gift of solitude......"

What a genius that man was.