Mar 12, 2020
Britten, celebration, daffodils, fair daffodils, gather ye rosebuds, Herrick, lament, Moeran, mortality, poem, poet, poetry, Robert Herrick, spring, springtime, to daffodils, to the virgins to make much of time, transience, William Wordsworth, Wordsworth
by Lucy Crispin
Occasionally I get a bit of a painful meta-position on Being A Poet and wonder quite how tiresome we are as companions. Imagine going for a walk with us. I mean, can’t we just enjoy the first flowers of spring, for goodness’ sake? Wordsworth managed some pleasure and gratitude about the daffs (or was it Dorothy…?); Herrick, however, looks on daffs and thinks of death (a bit like Larkin and his trees, but we’ll get to that in May). I have to confess to having a fair dose of inner Herrick. I love his ‘To Daffodils’ a lot more than the Wordsworth; and, now I’ve said that, you can read the poem here while I sit back and wait to be struck down.
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