Poetry Friday X

I confess that I almost forgot about poetry Friday this week. But a poem is never far away and another of my favourite poets (I think one of hundreds perhaps) is Wordsworth. Once upon a time I did a rather literary tour around the UK and am sorry that I don't have a scanner so I could post some photos of Wordsworth country. I've chosen the poem Daffodils because it's spring, and that is the time for daffodils. The only problem with poetry like this is that it is hard to inhabit it living here in Sydney. Hyde Park looked beautiful as I came by in the bus this morning with the sunlight glancing through it, but it is not a field of daffodils. So, that is why I have included the second poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (yet another favourite). The world immediately around me at present is indeed seared with trade and wears man's smudge, but nature is never spent (if one could only find a little piece of it!).

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.

William Wordsworth

God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins