Sunday, April 15, 2012

yellow daffodils

I love the color yellow: yellow blouses (and variations on that color), yellow butterflies, yellow sunflowers, yellow daffodils. I love the word "daffodil"--it sounds funny and light, just how the flower appears. When it's a tight bud, the flower looks like a loose nozzle hose; then it opens and reminds me of the kind of bicycle horns I used to have on my Schwinn when I was a kid. Wordsworth had a more lyrical impression of the flower--what is yours?

_________________________

It was on this day in 1802 that William Wordsworth (books by this author) and his sister, Dorothy
(books by this author), happened upon a profusion of
daffodils
along the banks of the nine-mile-long Ullswater Lake. Dorothy
wrote down a detailed description of the daffodils that helped inspire
Wordsworth to write the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" five years
later. It begins:

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.

from The Writer's Almanac 4/15/12

1 comment:

Susan Enholm-considerwriting.com said...

Daffodils remind me of the old telephone in our Scranton dining room. The adults would pick up the ear piece and "hello, hello" into what looked like a black daffodil on a sturdy base.