Daffodils

My feelings about poetry are similar to my feelings about philosophy. Most of the time I just don't get it. When I reach the end of a poem, more than half the time I land with a baffled sort of 'huh'. By turns incomprehensible, didactic, too floral, too long, boring, pointless, smug - nothing brings out my inner teenager like a poem. The times I do get it, it's like I have been sitting in a shoe shop trying on pair after pair of uncomfortable shoes when my foot slips into something that fits - total unexpected surprise, relief and joy. But it's rare. I guess I have mental bunions.  Anyway, I was out walking on the cliffs, happily noticing all of the daisies and primroses that have suddenly appeared, and it made me think of Wordsworth and his daffodils. I have never got on with any of the romantic poets in particular, I find the effect of reading them something like shoving a bunch of flowers into my mouth. But now I wondered whether it might be the same as with Montaigne, that the poem only fits when you are in the right mental space to receive it. So when I got back I looked it up. It's quite lovely actually (I can hear my English teacher turning in her grave - at least I didn't say it was "nice") - but it does leave me with a question: does it work, to remember nature in solitude, does it actually lift the heart? I find it very hard myself. I can bring an image into my mind for a few seconds maybe, but then it's gone. Looking at it again, though, he does say: "they flash upon that inward eye" - so maybe for Wordsworth too, it's just a moment of solace. Is that the whole point in writing the poem? Trying to recapture the moment, trying to make it live for a few precious seconds more?  For a moment of solace for you, here's the poem.

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.