Saturday 20 February 2010

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.



3 comments:

  1. Lovely poem – and I agree, he was a genius.

    Talking about flowers – my favourite one is the red rose (predictable? No, I don’t think) because I like thinking of it as a “bleeding heart with different layers which lead to the centre of passion” – (this is mine, I swear!) and we know, human heart has different layers of sensitivity.
    Time ago – in a casual conversation – I expressed my desire to see a red rose springing from snow.
    I like the contrast that this image offers to our look so – unless you’re in Lourdes where miracles like these surely happen - my surprise was great when, last week in Courmayeur, I saw my desire realized.
    Of course, it was artificial and thanks to the person who realized it – but I had never seen such a “real illusion” like that in my life. x

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  2. How lovely, Michela and you have painted the image so clearly that I can see it in my mind's eye - but I have made the rose real (and thus miraculous!) and it is heavily scented with a sweet, fragile fragrance....

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  3. Lovely poem indeed Ms Kendrick. And lovely golden image to start the day with. They were some of my Mum's favourite flowers...x

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