Day 11

Crowds of daffodils along the Charles River

A song for Monday: Mitski's "Nobody" from the artist's outstanding fifth album Be the Cowboy brings together disco and an existential crisis. To learn more about Mitski, check out the endearing New Yorker profile from last summer.

A poem about daffodils: William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is yet another great poem by the old master. Wordsworth was practicing social distancing centuries ago. Try out your own lonely, cloud-like wandering and write a poem about it!

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 

BY 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.

Works Cited

Mitski. "Nobody." Be the Cowboy, 2018, Dead Oceans.

Wordsworth, William (1770-1850). "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Poetryfoundation.org. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud. Accessed 23 Mar. 2020.