About Dancing

I love Spring!  Spring is fresh and new.  Green buds suddenly appear on grey, lifeless limbs.  Buds poke through the snow defying the old and cold.  The air smells fresh and spring rains reveal the hidden and lost.  Spring flowers are banners of perseverance and survival.  The hearty bulbs having survived the bitter burst forth in majestic color and sweet scent.  I enjoy roses and other flora, but tulips are my absolute favorite!  Tulips with their bright reds and pinks remind me of Springtimes past.  When I was a little girl, I  would gaze in fascination and reverent joy at mother’s beautiful tulip beds.  Her flower beds were always amazing!  She would allow me pick one or two every year, wrap them in moist paper towels and give it as a gift to my teacher.  It was such a precious gift and an honor to deliver them to the teachers that I adored.

I discovered the poem, “Daffodils,” by Williams Wordsworth decades ago, but it still sings my heart.  The poem is about a field of beautiful, golden daffodils.  When I read this poem, I feel like a little girl again dancing in the light spring rain among my strong-willed floral friends.  Join me as I am DANCING WITH DAFFODILS…

“Daffodils” (1804)

I WANDER’D 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 stretch’d 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.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).