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 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.
I don't know if anyone has already said this, but I was doing some digging into William Wordsworth and saw he has a poem called "We Are Seven." It immediately caught my eye because of the obvious connection to the song Seven. I think I can connect the subject matter, but I might be reaching. Here goes:
tldr on the poem, the narrator is talking to a young girl who is insisting that there are seven children in her family (basically that she has 6 siblings). It's revealed that two of her siblings are dead, so the narrator tries to convince the girl that there are 5 children in her family, not 7. She is never convinced, and even talks about all the activities she does by the graves of her siblings as a demonstration of their bond.
The poem describes the girl as having thick curly hair and an air of innocence and life, someone who cannot understand loss or grief. Reminds me of the innocent persona that she and her team have pushed for her (and her hair lol). She's also described as basically the pinnacle of cottagecore aesthetic lol
Mostly though the poem makes me think of not being able to move on, and the insistence that something dead does not mean something gone or something that never happened. Just because the little girl's siblings are dead, doesn't mean they aren't her siblings. Makes me think of RWYLM and IBYTAM.
More pedantically, "hit my peak at seven" - the little girl counts her and her siblings as a total of 7, which is the peak of how many they were as opposed to the 5 living at the time.
Am I grasping at straws here?
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played:
Their thoughts I cannot measure,
But the least motion which they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
https://link.medium.com/YgR0hM4Alkb
From The Birmingham Age-Herald, August 22, 1913.
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight’s too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn,
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath
A traveler between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright
With something of angelic light.
I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and bloom
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
There's weakness, and strength both redundant and vain;
Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain
Could pierce through a temper that's soft to disease,
Would be rational peace—a philosopher's ease.
There's indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds,
And attention full ten times as much as there needs;
Pride where there's no envy, there's so much of joy;
And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.
There's freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare
Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she's there,
There's virtue, the title it surely may claim,
Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.
This picture from nature may seem to depart,
Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart;
And I for five centuries right gladly would be
Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.
- Who were the poets mentioned in The Lakes?
In her folklore's bonus track, The Lakes, Taylor referred to the Lake District in England, the home to English poets in the first half of the 1900s: William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey. She cleverly mentioned Wordsworth in her song "I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze tell me what are my words worth*"* without being obvious.
However, in The Lakes, Taylor wrote "Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die". Poets. While William Wordsworth did die in Lake District, both Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey did not. The two poets died in London. So, of course inevitably, the next question is, who was the other poet Taylor was referring to other than William Wordsworth? I believe she was referring to Dorothy Wordsworth, a prose writer who influenced the work of an English Romantic poet that launched the Romantic Age in English lit, and a sister to William Wordsworth. Dorothy Wordsworth was not an amateur or simply a "sister to" the William Wordsworth, she was one of the first people William turned to to read and criticize his poems. In Taylor's own words, "I want auroras and sad prose" and who was Dorothy if not known as a writer of proses?
Leave it to Taylor Swift to celebrate a female poet who stayed unrecognized in the shadow of a man who was known for his revolutionary crafts.
https://preview.redd.it/7bfvubronu371.png?width=879&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecaa75912496e3d7392e3ec04306583bdcce0804
- Dorothy Wordsworth: unrecognized gifted writer or humble companion of her brother?
Dorothy wrote the Grasmere Journal which contained material on which William took for his poetry. Her description of daffodils in April 1802 inspired his "I wandered lonely as a cloud". Dorothy's own poems had been published in William's editions since 1815 but they were never attributed to "Dorothy Wordsworth". Thomas De Quincey, the English essayist and critic, averred that Dorothy might, if she chose, have flourished as a “writer for the press,” and that she would deserve a “separate notice in any biographical dictionary of our times, had there even been no William Wordsworth in existence”.
Why didn't Dorothy leave her brother and start her own journey of being a poet, free of her brother's shadow? William
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I've finished reading the ballad of songbirds and snakes and I've come to realise the link to William Wordsworth's poem "Lucy Gray" in the book. The reason I find this cool is because I live in a fairly small town called cockermouth and that is also where William Wordsworth is from. Just thought it was pretty interesting lol.
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 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.
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 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.
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
