Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Daffodils

The parks, the banks of the Thames, everywhere there are green spaces there are thousands of daffodils.

The botanic name for these flowers is Narcissus. In Greek mythology the young Narcissus was so obsessed with his own reflection in the water he either fell in and drowned or died of starvation sitting there. Choose your version. Either way this is the flower that sprang up where he died.
Another story is the flower is named after its narcotic properties.
As I was wandering around taking pictures of daffodils I drove my walking companion nuts trying to remember the words to Wordsworth's poem.
Ha now you're trying to remember aren't you. I'll save you the angst. here it is:

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 leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but 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.