The Restorative Power of Daffodils

daffodils2Daffodils have been breaking out all over.  St. Mary’s City has a little ravine that we refer to as “Daffodil Gulch,” and the flowers this year have been spectacular.  Daffodil Gulch borders St. Mary’s River, and if one visits it on a sunny day and then looks beyond to the sparkling waters, one cannot help but recall one of Britain’s most beloved poems:

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 leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but 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.

I love the way that Wordsworth moves from a wandering mind to a focused mind, as though the flowers have brought him up with a start. The opening image of “wandering lonely as a cloud” also anticipates the final stanza, when he is a different kind of wanderer—when he he is lying on his couch “in vacant or in pensive mood.”  At such moments, the image grabs his attention a second time.  This time, however, it is the inward eye that is gazing.

The idea of the eye storing up images (a bit like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter) appears also in other Wordsworth poems.  For instance, in Tintern Abbey Wordsworth talks about such images being invaluable when he is in a city and separated from nature.  In this poem the memories are of the Wye River:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart . . .

And further on:

              Yet, oh! How oft–
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart–
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

I have been telling my intro to lit students (the course focus is nature literature) that taking walks in the outdoors and gazing at its glories can bail them out when (again to quote Tintern Abbey) they feel burdened by “the weary weight of all this unintelligible world.”  Nature, especially if they view it as Wordsworth does, can provide them with a powerful anti-depressant.

Wordsworth assures us that “nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” It will help get us through those moments when we are beset upon by evil tongues, rash judgments, the sneers of selfish men, greetings where no kindness is, and all the dreary intercourse of daily life (the list is Wordworth’s).

So next time you see a daffodil, know that are you could be adding another item to a regenerative storehouse.  Which is to say (using Tintern Abbey images), to a mind that is a “mansion for all lovely forms” and to a memory that is a “dwelling-place for all sweet sounds and harmonies.”   Take a walk and enjoy.

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