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Rabu, 26 April 2006
It always snows on the daffodils
I USED to be able to say that! Even if it was only a dusting, we always had snow in April. Everything blooming seems accelerated this year, for sure! and last night we had a pretty good frost, but no snow.
I understand rosemaries can take some cold temps. As they say, "We'll see."
I did drag indoors the 2 fancy leafed geraniums that I overwintered ('Kaleidescope')who were out on the patio.
Sorry I didn't record where I found this woodcut "April, 1922", or the artist's name.
The daffodils going crazy once more remind me of a favorite image of Nature in Dylan Thomas' poem:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
A green fuse, so right.
However, I won't print that poem here, being not a light Spring ditty, but rather a dark rant against the ravages of Time and Nature against Men.
Here is a better poem for daffodils, maybe you'll think of it sometimes. For instance, while playing Jeopardy:
Q: For fifty points, the plural of daffodils.
Buzz. A: What is a crowd?
Host: We would have accepted host, too.
Daffodils are special to me, I associate them with my mother. The genius of this poem is the actual movement within it, movement in time, space, and mood. Like the changeable weather patterns within the inexorable turning of seasons. It's all there in one small poem.
William Wordsworth 1804
"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.