TWO centuries ago, in 1804, English poet William Wordsworth wrote the first version of his celebrated poem The Daffodils. Half a century back, I, as a secondary school student, read it in the prescribed poetry book. The poem not only fascinated me, but ever since has continued to haunt me. When I am “in pensive mood”, its words and images “flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude”.
When I visited the Lake District in England, where Wordsworth was born and wrote his finest poetry, including The Daffodils, I spent quite a few days over there and walked all alone for miles to look for the spot where Wordsworth might have seen the dancing, golden daffodils. In the end, I was led to believe that I almost saw it.
William Wordsworth and his younger sister Dorothy Wordsworth were in their early thirties when they happened to see these wild, yellow flowers that back then used to grow in April, and now make their appearance in February. He transformed his thoughts and emotions into verse, about two years later, but Dorothy recorded her impressions almost immediately, in flowing, partly unpunctuated prose, in her journal.
On April 17, 1802, Dorothy made the following entry into her journal: “Thursday 15th was a threatening misty morning — but mild. We set off after dinner from Eusemere ... The wind was furious. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park, we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside, 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 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. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up, but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway.”
It was in 1804 that William Wordsworth composed the first version of the poem, which then comprised three stanzas only. It was published in 1807, on pages 49 and 50 of the second volume of his collection titled Poems in two volumes. The poem itself was without a title. The first version read: 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 dancing daffodils; Along the lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.
The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay In such a laughing company: I gaz’d — and gaz’d — but little thought What wealth the shew 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.
This poem is today ranked among the top 10 great poems ever written in English. However, two centuries ago, after its publication, it evoked critical and even satirical comments. Two such comments whose authors were also poets are given below.
In August, 1807, a poetess, Anna Seaward, wrote to her friend Sir Walter Scott: “Surely Wordsworth must be as mad as was ever the poet Lee. Those volumes of his, which you were so good to give me, have excited, by turns, my tenderness and warm admiration, my contemptuous astonishment and disgust. The two latter rose to their utmost height while I read about his dancing daffodils, 10,000, as he says, in high dance in the breeze beside the river, whose waves dance with them and the poet’s heart, we are told, danced too. Then he proceeds to say that, in the hours of pensive or of pained contemplation, these same capering flowers flash on his memory, and his heart, losing its cares, dances with them again. Surely if his worst foe had chosen to caricature this egotistic manufacturer of metaphysic importance upon trivial themes, he could not have done it more effectually.”
In January, 1815, poet James Montgomery wrote in the Eclectic Review: “Few people would be sentimentally struck by the unexpected appearance ‘of a host of dancing daffodils’ on the margin of a lake, ‘whose sparkling waves danced beside them’; and still fewer would carry away the image and treasure it up in memory for the occasional exhilaration of their private thoughts; yet Mr Wordsworth, after fancifully describing such a merry dance of flowers and sunbeams on the water says ... ‘In vacant or in pensive mood/ They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude.’”
Between 1807 and 1815, Wordsworth revised the poem and added a stanza to it. It was printed, in 1815, on pages 328 and 329 of his collected works, once again without a title, and was phrased in the following immortal words:
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 last stanza in both versions is exactly the same. In the words of Wordsworth, the two best lines in the poem are the last but two lines of the last stanza, ie, the middle lines. In November 1807, he wrote: “There were two lines in that little poem which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine tenths of the reviews of the kingdom; the lines I alluded to were those ‘They flash upon that inward eye\ Which is the bliss of solitude.’”
According to Wordsworth, these two lines were not his composition; this was the contribution of his wife Mary. The title of The Daffodils was first given to this poem in 1843 — 36 years after it was first published, and seven years before Wordsworth died, in 1850, at the ripe’ old age of 80.
