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DS106 Trial Assignment

Sunday, 3 Apr 2016, 17:20
Visible to anyone in the world- Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 3 Apr 2016, 17:21
– Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 3 Apr 2016, 17:21

My response is based on this mid-difficulty writing assignment.

My poem title is:

English Suppression or Wordsworth Gazes on Thom Gunn

My poem:

Vacantly loitering in a lane,

Closed to the main street and its low displays

Nearby, I saw grouped idly alert

A tightly held group of fellows dancing

Beside a door stood open, it seemed

To others that desiring might then join.

So all together they extended time

In fervent fun along that darker track

That going on and on, no sign of end

To come, beside the road where no one came:

How many there were I hardly counted

Too lost in the toss of their sweating hair.

Along the crowd five bikes withstood the sway

Of dancing bodies, the thrill of speed forgot,

Neither poet I nor bold now to say

That to be so gay, I feared I was not.

Just look – and look – until all I dare think

Was seeing this is near a distant link

To all I might be. Nearing home at last

 And switching on that light touching my feet

I felt that slow mood glisten into fast

Lines of inward music thrilling to the beat

Of something like my heart, suspecting fads

Of old age, but dancing with those lads.

The Original

The Daffodils

William Wordsworth, 1770 – 1850

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.