Imagine the scene.... It's early spring in the year 1802 and you are walking with your brother in the English Lake District beside the lake known as Ullswater. A truly beautiful place in pleasant weather but today the water reflects the moody grey of the sky, the mountains look menacing and the wind whips icy rain against your face. You trudge along beside the lake sheltering as best you can beneath the narrow belt of trees that grows between the lake and turnpike road just a few yards away.
Keeping your head down you travel ever onwards. Then suddenly you come across a scene that stops you in your tracks. Daffodils! Growing beside the lake, dancing in the breeze. Might this cheerful view not inspire you to write a few lines of verse. I think by now you'll have guessed where I am headed!
The brother and sister in my little story were William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. In 1802 Dorothy wrote about this day in her journal and later William recalled the experience in his now famous poem.
I've been waiting for the just the right weather to photograph the exact spot where the poet had his spark of inspiration and yesterday was perfect. I travelled to Ullswater (just a few miles form where I live) and found just the scene I'd been hoping for. 207 years after Wordsworth passed by, in the same place, beside the lake, beneath the trees, daffodils were still fluttering and dancing in the breeze. That is the beauty of this lovely area, so much of it has remained unchanged from the days when the poet lived here.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
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.
The little daffodils growing beside the lake are native British wild daffodils -Narcissus pseudonarcissus
I have a copy of Dorothy Wordsworth's journal which she kept from 1800 to 1803 (see below). Dorothy's original hand written journal is in the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere.
The journal was written whilst the Wordsworths lived at Dove Cottage. From this link you can look inside the cottage and also view the other homes the family had in the Lake District.
Dorothy writes in her journal:
'When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last under the boughs of the trees we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of the turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful'.
'They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake'.
I'm finishing this post with a photo I took of St Patrick's Church in Patterdale, not far from the scenes above. Built in 1853 it makes a pretty picture with its churchyard full of daffodils.
Until next time,
Eli
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