POET OF THE PAST – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
THIS simple poem, one of the loveliest of all Wordsworth’s works, despite the sometimes hackneyed and over-used opening lines, has lost none of its freshness since it was written over 200 years ago. The musical eloquence of the words “My heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils” instills the reader with the feelings the poet himself is experiencing.
Since the mid-16th century, daffodils have been recognised as the first true indicator of the arrival of spring. Shakespeare writes in The Winter’s Tale, “When daffodils begin to peer . . . Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year”, although it is Wordsworth’s poem which has achieved lasting fame throughout the English-speaking world.
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth in Cumbria, the second of five children of John and Ann Wordsworth. His sister, Dorothy, was born the following year. They were baptised together and were inseparable throughout their lives. His father was a legal representative of the Earl of
Lonsdale. His mother died when he was eight, and William went to grammar school in Hawkshead.
He later attended school in Penrith where he was to meet his future wife, Mary Hutchinson.
At 18, William went to St John’s College, Cambridge, returning to the Lake District in the holidays where he began walking and absorbing the beauty of the local landscape. Whilst visiting France in 1791 he fell in love with a Frenchwoman, Annette Vallon, by whom he had a daughter, Caroline. Although the Revolution kept them apart, he managed occasional visits, usually with his sister, and provided them with financial support. In 1802, he married his childhood sweetheart, Mary, and, having inherited a substantial legacy in 1795, pursued a career writing poetry. His first published work, Descriptive Sketches ,had achieved some success two years earlier. William and Dorothy lived at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, to where Mary also moved when they married. They had five children, three of whom predeceased their parents.
The poem Daffodils is believed to have been inspired after William and Dorothy had been walking together near Glendale not far from where they lived. Composed by Wordsworth in 1804, his sister wrote later, “When we were in the woods beyond
Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. But as we went along there were more and more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake.”
In 1795, Wordsworth had become close friends with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, later famous for writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner which was published in
Lyrical Ballads with another of Wordsworth’s well-known poems,
Tintern Abbey. These enhanced Wordsworth’s reputation as a major poet and, with Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English Literature. With Richard Southey, who also lived in the Lake District, the three men became the principal members of the so-called “Lake Poets”.
With Southey’s death in 1843, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate, which he remained until he died on 23 April 1850. He is buried in St Oswald’s church in Grasmere. Thereafter his influence was felt throughout the rest of the 19th century and although he was honoured for his poems, like Daffodils ,itis not regarded as Wordworth’s masterpiece. This accolade is reserved for The Prelude.
In the 20th century his reputation was strengthened both by recognition of his importance in the Romantic Movement and by an appreciation of the darker elements in his personality and verse. The wistful thoughts of the author, so timelessly expressed in Daffodils, will forever encapsulate the joy experienced every year at the coming of spring.