fact, opinion and poetry (not airy-fairy)


Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Daffodils Revisited

I wandered lonely as a cloud,
Into the kitchen where I saw
My flowers looking none too proud;
Especially my daffodils.
In their little pot they sag
Upon the crowded window sill.

Sufficient water they've not had,
Nor potting out into more dirt.
My treatment of them is so bad
It's a wonder they have not been kilt.
Could be they'd thrive with more attention,
But a drop of water's all their gettin'.

Were I as rich as Wordsworth was,
I too could wander cross the land,
Spend out my time for no great cause,
And live in some place much more grand.
My plants I'd treat with loving care -
Or would I merely sit and stare?

    I reread Wordsworth's superb "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (aka "Daffodils")when it came up as 'Poem of the Day' on www.poemhunter.com. Someone on there claimed it was saying that leisure and laziness show man at his best. I replied that it was about a man of the leisured class fighting the characteristic ennui of his kind. When bored out of his skull, he replays the memory of the daffodils. Of course, it is the description of the daffs themselves that accounts for the popularity of the work. We are exposed to it as children, when we aren't old enough to really understand it. It is a much edgier work than we are told. Look at the first line in isolation. How jolly is that? If he had called it "A Refuge from Melancholia" it might have been better understood.
    Recent scientific research has suggested that the best treatment for depression is a brisk walk in the park. Wordsworth was centuries ahead of them. In his day, few people had too little to do. Now there are millions, and his idea of taking refuge in nature is very relevant.
    Re-reading it made me wonder if anyone has written a poem about daffodils in English since. He is a hard act to follow. To try to match him on his 'home ground' would risk buffoonery; a different approach was needed. I thought of my tiny pot of wilted miniature daffies and off I went.
     Naturally he is more concerned with precise rhyming structure and metre than I: the taste of a different century.

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