++I wandered lonely as a cloud++. Review on Daffodils - William Wordsworth

Music and Lyrics

Before a couple of days, I was listening to “Animal Song”, by Savage Garden. Superstars, cannonballs, subways, cops – and any sort of hubbub that churn your body, mind and intellect might push you to break free to that unknown shore of tranquility. There you want to rediscover your elements, careless and free like an animal, run through the jungle, living in every moment with wind in your hair and sand at your feet.

Lyrics without music – does that amount to body without life? That was my presentiment for long as I was primarily as music person. Music provides choice of freedom without being bothered about the meaning of the https://lyrics. But, you are proved wrong when you came across tour de force of the highest order – There you have “Daffodils”. It has got its own life and invites you gently to the grandeur of artistic excellence.

Sorry for the blasphemous parallel drawn between Animal Song and Daffodils. I have not found any better illustration to prove that excellent piece of poetry does not require the support of music. Animal Song lyrics need to be accompanied by music without which “Superstars and cannonballs” remain as obtrusive images.

The beginning

Like many of us, I read “Daffodils” during my school days as part of curriculum.

"I wander’d lonely as a cloud,That floats on high o’er vale 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"

It is the beginning of the magic that is going to lug you down to depth of poetic beauty which you cannot fathom! Verses are straddling with aesthetically knit images of nature, carried away in the wings of rhetoric. Also, the brilliant rhyming (wandered – cloud ; daffodils-trees-breeze). Is it possible not to let your mind free as a cloud and get stunned by the dazzling panorama of the divine hoedown of daffodils? It’s time to let your unwavering thoughts free.

What is poetry

The poet laureate of England, William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. Might be this is the essence of his creativity. Daffodils remain as an epitome of this definition.

Images

Wordsworth is known as Nature's Poet. He got the craft to float natures’ excellence in the wings of his poem. Along with Daffodils, you have Milky Way, trees, lake everything resonating and dancing as if they personify the rhythm of nature.

It has been beautifully conveyed that, at times of agony, he experiences the bliss of solitude thinking of the fluttering daffodils.

“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”

This exemplifies how a poet espied the eternal bond of all forms of life and nature in unison.

Thinking further

This poem is characterized by “figure of speech”. Poet is compared a lonely cloud which is an inanimate image which wanders high above. Does it depict the aimless pursuit with a macro vision of human life?

Or does it signify the eternal desire to break free from the miseries of life? Suddenly when your attention is grabbed by a bunch of daffodils (in poets of words – Ten thousand I saw at a glance – A classic hyperbole).

Aimlessness is being struck down with something else. It could be the aesthetic appeal which made him stop by but later he invented the rhythm of life. From here onwards, the poetry is elevating from a level of aesthetics to philosophical truth.

To sum up

This poem is all about the beauty of being a part of the larger truth. We are like the pieces of rime that constitute the hail storm. Each piece of rime is having its own identity. It has the same rhythm and music of the larger entity.

The moment it is separated out, it is transformed into droplets of water but still capable of capturing the image of the larger world. It evaporates and again became the part of atmosphere and might be it reincarnate as a piece of rime, drizzle ---- what ever!

At any given point of time, our existence and identity is that of the “a constituent of Mother Nature”. The more you are closer to the same; you realize that everything is connected by an eternal rhythm.

To reflect universal truth with simple images – that’s genius. That’s William Wordsworth.