Portrait of a Daffodil

“Daffodils” (1804)

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

“I WANDER’D 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.” (Continued below)

 

I was a school student in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which was a British colony at the time. Our education was therefore very British-centric, and in English classes I remember learning the poem “Daffodils”. This lyrical poem appealed to me, for its rhythmic language and the images it evoked, and they were just images in my mind’s eye. Because, Rhodesia is in a sub-tropical zone and I never saw daffodils actually growing.

Rather, we had flame lilies (gloriosa superba), frangipani trees with their gorgeous fragrant blossoms, bright bougainvilleas growing profusely up other trees or sides of houses, hibiscus flowers as big as my dad’s hand, and poinsettia trees. We might, perhaps, find the delicate spring daffodils in a special flower shop, enormously expensive and therefore never something we had any personal contact with. They were something pretty that we could find in a book, but the riotous blooms in our own backyard were far more accessible and attractive.

But, then I moved to the USA and in our state we have four definite seasons. The first spring, after a hard winter with lots of snow and ice, I discovered the real draw of these spring flowers. How, after cold, bare, grey times, these amazing plants begin to shoot, how the green fronds and the bright yellow trumpets signal a renewal, are a symbol of rebirth. Each spring, we go looking for the first daffodils, and each year we are amazed all over again at how varied they can be, some small, some huge, many with multiple petals, and in a staggering variety of color combinations. With cameras we try to capture the beauty, the essence, what these flowers stand for, but can never really do them justice. As I watch daffodils waving in the breeze, I can now identify with the words of Wordsworth’s poem.

…“Continuous as the stars that shine      

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch’d 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.”

This is my attempt at a Portrait of A Daffodil.

 

 

 

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