“The Daffodils” ⁂ classics

While I have many works that are in the list of personal favorites, this piece is Number 1 and has been for, oh, 18 years or so. I can’t decide if its the descriptions of his wandering and the beautiful landscape that unfolded before him, the fact that Wordsworth cannot help but be happy because of that beauty, or that he pulls the scene up internally whenever he needs some solitude and finds his peaceful center once more that makes me smile and feel the warmth of sunshine but whatever it is I feel this piece is perfection.

(Image source: geograph.org.uk, daffodils by Dee River)

“The Daffodils”

By William Wordsworth

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.