“such are daffodils/with the green world they live in”

“Daffodils,” Photo by Sheila L.

Lead by example: Support women on their way to the top. Trust that they will extend a hand to those who follow. –Mariela Dabbah

I tried and tried to capture the daffodils this spring, but they were a bit wonky and difficult to photograph, so I am grateful for the perfect bunch of daffodils my Love Notes friend, Sheila L, sent along with Mariela Dabbah’s quote encouraging women to empower each other through reaching back and extending a hand.

Daffodils make me think of spring and poetry, so that’s where my head went when I received this card.

William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is the “daffodils” poem familiar to many, but since I used that poem on the blog (twice) already, I’m turning to my favorite Romantic poet, John Keats. He mentions the daffodils in the first lines of his “Endymion, Book I,” a treatise on the potency and timelessness of beauty.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms […]

If you’d like to read the full poem, find it here: Endymion on Bartleby

I hope your week is filled with sunshine, poetry, and brilliant blooms.

15 thoughts on ““such are daffodils/with the green world they live in””

  3. Ellen Hawley says:
    Reply

    Okay, I can’t help myself: I have to write about Cornwall and daffodils. They’re grown commercially here, so in places you can see fields of them in the spring. On a smaller scale, people plant them in their yards, along the roadsides, all over the place, and they start to bloom in late January or early February and carry on right through the long spring, like a blaze of sunlight. I’ve been told that during WWII, when every bit of arable land was needed to raise food, people dug them up but couldn’t bear to throw them away, so they tossed them into the hedges and the edges of the wood, where they still grow.

    Liked by 3 people

  5. Mali says:
    Reply

    Well, we’re in the opposite season, so no daffs here, but I do love seeing them, and can remember last spring. That’s what photos are for me – they make the first lines of the poem real.
    “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
    Its loveliness increases; …”

    Liked by 1 person

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