"I wander'd lonely..."

When we were in library school, I often dragged my best friend to the bookstore to buy yet another copy of Favorite Poems by William Wordsworth (God bless Dover for the $1 books!) because I would be absolutely overcome with a need to read "Daffodils" immediately. I must have bought (and then given away) about six of those books!

You'd think I'd remember to keep a copy in my knapsack.

You'd be wrong.

Spring is here again and the front of my library boasts a golden sea of these sprightly flowers. Everytime I go upstairs, I am struck by their beauty and my heart is made glad and I start to itch for the Wordsworth book again.

Hence, today's poem:

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.