W. Curtis, Botanic Garden, Lambeth Marsh (1789) |
Dorothy Wordsworth was an engaged and engaging naturalist in her own right. Here she describes the spring flowers that would become the subject for perhaps her brother William's most famous poem: "When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them [the end we did not see (erased)] along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, 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, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing" (Journal, 15 April 1802). It would take her poetic brother two years of imaginative effort to turn this wonderfully immediate natural description into "When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils." (A.N.) |