I
wander'd
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 that
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 the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
-- William Wordsworth
This poem was written in 1804 and published in 1807, and the second stanza was inserted in 1815. The original scene that led to it (and a fair bit of the wording) is recorded in Dorothy Wordsworth's journal. On 15 April 1802 they were in Gowbarrow Park, near Ullswater, and Dorothy wrote:
I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones . . .; 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; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.
Wordsworth said the best two lines in the
poem were "They flash upon the inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude", and that his wife had written those.
Similar to a nodeshell rescue. Someone was asking about that quote about daffodils, and I said that if E2 was a database worth having you should just go to the word that sticks in your mind, daffodil, and follow the softlinks until you find your poem. Doing that however revealed the startling absence of this poem.
After I had pasted this in, I found it was noded but under the title I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, and without any of the hardlinks integrated. No point putting brackets around words if you don't click on the important ones to activate them.