CREATIVE REFRESHMENT

‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ by William Wordsworth

‘Dreams of Spring’ painting by Susan Alison

‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ 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.

‘Daffodils’ is William Wordsworth’s most famous poem — I am not surprised — it evokes a magical atmosphere that has universal appeal. However, it is ‘The Prelude’, his autobiographical poem, not published until three months after his death, that is considered his greatest work.

William Wordsworth, born in 1870 in Cumbria, was central to the English Romantic revolution in poetry and is regarded as one of the greatest English poets of all time.

He was born into a very close family but his mother died when he was eight and his father when he was thirteen. The siblings had to be separated and sent to live with relatives, then boarding school and college.

After that William Wordsworth walked through Europe. It’s estimated that he walked 10,000 miles during his lifetime. There is no doubt this helped his creativity. He would sometimes walk at night and, because of this, some local people thought he might be a spy for France …

He wrote a lot about the beauty of England’s Lake District, and possibly because of his evocative descriptions of the area, people flocked to the country from the city. He might have been the originator of the national parks movement idea.

He married a childhood friend, Mary, and had five children. Three of them died before their parents, and William gave up writing new work after his daughter, Dora, died aged forty-two in 1847.

With the early loss of his parents, and of three of his children, Wordsworth was personally too well acquainted with grief. Despite this, some contemporary critics reckoned he had ‘sold out’ because his life didn’t have enough angst running through it. This is possibly because, despite the prevalence of mental illness and addiction to alcohol and/or opium in many other poets of his time, Wordsworth suffered neither, merely living a quiet life with Mary.

It would seem that ‘critics’ in any era are never satisfied!

Some quotes from William Wordsworth:

“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”

“When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude”

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

“We have within ourselves Enough to fill the present day with joy, And overspread the future years with hope.”

“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”

My own creativity is always refreshed by reading the creative works of others — especially some of the classic poems, knowing they were written in a different world at a different time, with a different mindset.

*This poem is in the public domain. Stuff you need to know about the use of other people’s work.

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