Wordsworth's poem:
Daffodils
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.
Everybody remembers and quotes the first line: "I wandered lonely as a cloud," but that line has never resonated with me like the end: the not knowing at the time what a gift the experience is because in the moment you don't know it will be one of those moments... the kind of moment that comes back to you unexpectedly when doing the dishes or falling asleep... and makes you smile.
My favorite Pushkin poem has a similar tone:
Oh, I have loved you, and perhaps my spirit
Still harbors a warm glow of love today.
But God forbid that you be burdened with it;
I would not sadden you in any way.
I loved you with a wordless, hopeless fashion,
Sometimes in Jealous rage, sometimes struck dumb,
I loved you with a deep and tender passion.
May you be loved like this in years to come.
(Some translations have that last line as: may God grant that you will be loved like this again).
When I first read Pushkin's poem the skin on the back of my neck quivered, and I wept. Oh! To weep at poetry! To be a liberal arts graduate student! Now I feel weepy when I'm exhausted and I look down and see how badly the toilets need to be cleaned.
The poems are bookends for me because of the element of time. Wordsworth: the unexpected small things endure; Pushkin: an event/emotion that seems so enormous and right-now that you can barely wrestle it into submission... will eventually becomes small enough to hold in your palm, enabling you to graciously, and elegantly hand it off...
Poetry. April is National Poetry month. The first April we lived here I walked up the West side of Broadway where a book from one of the sidewalk bookseller's tables had fallen -- pages of poetry were scattered. I looked down and saw that I was walking on poems, and I thought: It's appropriate for April, and the sun suddenly seemed keener. This April we will read and write poems like crazy.
April is still five days out, but today had all the elements for inspiring poetry. As it's Spring break our friends came to us. We went to the park and the children all ran and laughed and sulked and whined and smiled and looked panicked and carried on secret lives even though they were only a few yards away from us at any given moment... And the daffodils are blooming.
John Fowles (no direct relation) wrote: "We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words."
