In mid-February I saw a few dozen round-bellied robins on a coastal Lowcountry Sea Island.
Some of them were really getting some bugs!
All the robins were hopping and darting in the sun and among leaves,
making a good lunch from the bugs, grubs, and what-nots that have come up since the ground thawed.
The daffodils are in bloom rather suddenly – seems like last week they weren’t even sprouts.
But it’s like that each springtime, daffodils are always a pleasant surprise.
Just like last year and the year before that, on back to 1804 and beyond.
It’s an old image (above), a decent photo, but it’s just an attempt,
because the real deal is this wonderful visual,
“beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”
The inward eye, led by Wordsworth, trumps any captured image, no contest.
We all win when we picture:
“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.
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.
