Throughout my life I have been fortunate enough to do lots of traveling. Given the option to buy clothes or jewellery I would generally choose neither. And travel instead. This past year, however, has been exceptional as I am currently a UK citizen so a whole new range of towns and regions have opened up to me. This past week I visited the Lake District with friends and family. The home of William Wordsworth was top on my list and it didn’t fail to live up to its whimsical reputation. We wandered around the small town in Cumbria and specifically the home and gardens he lived in for most of his life. An experience I would never have experienced on a mere trip to England. I will treasure this week for as long as memory serves me.
“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.”
englandia 