Monday, March 7, 2011

Remembering...

There's this poem that's been stuck in my brain for several weeks now. It's a poem that my grandpa read to me when I was about eight or nine years old. He told me that every time he read this poem, it reminded him of me. This is the first poem I can remember liking. I didn't read poetry much when I was a kid, but when grandpa died, I got a couple of his poetry books which are treasures to me. And I write a lot of poetry now; maybe I wouldn't have started writing poetry if my grandpa hadn't shared this poem with me. I don't know.

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.