Show your acquaintance with the Poem The Daffodils
Question 1.
Show your acquaintance with the poem “The Daffodils.”
Answer:
Wordsworth has been called the greatest poet of Nature. This does not mean that his poetry is only about trees, forests, hills valleys. This great Romantic poet has a comprehensive philsophic vision. This vision includes the hole cosmos of which man and nature are but parts. Thus Wordsworth is more a poet of man than of nature. In any case, he does not see man apart from Nature.
Real knowledge and wisdom are born out of man’s communion with nature. Thus Wordsworth is always the hero of his poem. He explores meaning in man’s life and finds it only in man’s communion with nature. This poet even reaches god-head through nature. Nature is as much a scripture (MuPta ti*0 of God as is the Bible.
True, in The Daffodils the poet gives the picture of nature in a few of its aspects. At the centre are the golden daffodils dancing and tossing their heads along the edge of the Grasmere lake. There is the gentle wind that gives them motion to dance. The waves in the water of the lake are also dancing.
Then there are the clouds high up over the valley and the hills. Then there is the comparison of the unending line of daffodils with the unending line of the milkyway made up of twinkling stars. Then at the focal point is the poet himself with a deep concern :
I agzed and gazed but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
That is exploring a meaning in Nature. Wordsworth of course finds it. In the school of nature he learns geat truths and wisdom. He developes a philosophic mind that can see beyond the present and even beyond the terrestrial existence. Thus when he is lonely and depressed and the present is shorn of all meaning, the past comes to his rescue.
The experience Of the past come into the present and the poet is saved from depression and lineliness. The sights of the past as of the daffodils flash on his inner eyes.
And then my heart with pleasure fills.
And dances with the daffodils.