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[Photo collage by KPA]
Only a week ago, it was hard to find even potted daffodils. Now, whole fields are in bloom. I thought these daffodils were tulips as I walked by them yesterday. I don't know how they suddenly appeared in this field (park) that I walk by almost daily. The park's gardeners must have spent all day (all night?) planting them to give us this field of surprise. The poem Daffodils is much more suited here than in my original "Daffodils" post.
Daffodils
William Wordsworth
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.
On a more macabre note, as I looked up "surprise" on dictionary.com, I found the first two lines of Emily Dickinson's short poem Apparently with no Surprise listed under its "famous quotations" section.
Apparently with no Surprise
Emily Dickinson
Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play,
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on.
The sun proceeds unmoved,
To measure off another day,
For an approving God.
Our nice weather girl promises summer-like humidex levels within the next few days (and also promises a "nice hot summer" after the cold and rainy spring we've had so far). Morning frost is no longer part of the spring.
It isn't only spring and daffodils that have prompted me to look up poetry. Here is a post I wrote on (long-gone) winter with a photo of "snow dust," a phrase I used without knowing about Robert Frost's poem Dust of Snow, another short (unexpectedly macabre) poem.
But, let's forget winter (and the macabre). Spring is here.