Editor’s Note: When exploring the theme – Divine in Nature, we could not have left out English Romantic Poetry. Featured here is William Wordsworth’s famous poem I wandered lonely as a cloud, also popularly known as Daffodils. He wrote this poem in April 1802. Inspiration for it came as he took a walk with his sister Dorothy near Ullswater Lake, in England. Wordsworth revised the poem in 1815.
In its four stanzas, the melodious poem evokes the gentle and elevating beauty of daffodils – the delicate blossoms which announce the coming of Spring, and all things new. It is no surprise that the Mother gave for daffodils the spiritual significance – Power of Beauty. And she added further – Beauty acquires its power only when it is surrendered to the Divine.
As a bonus, we also present here a recitation of the poem by Renaissance author, Narendra Murty. And also enjoy a small video which visualises a beautiful but highly relevant and inspiring quote from Sri Aurobindo.
“Flowers and trees are the poetry of Nature; the gardener is a romantic poet who has added richness, complexity of effect and symmetry to a language otherwise distinguished merely by facility, by directness and by simplicity of colour and charm.”
~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Vol. 1, p. 84
Sri Aurobindo on Wordsworth
It is difficult for the modern mind to understand how we can do more than conceive intellectually of the Self or of God; but it may borrow some shadow of this vision, experience and becoming from that inner awakening to Nature which a great English poet has made a reality to the European imagination. If we read the poems in which Wordsworth expressed his realisation of Nature, we may acquire some distant idea of what realisation is.
~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Vol. 23, p. 306
Read:
“In Nature one can live in beauty, always”
I wandered lonely as a cloud
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.
