It Only Happens Once a Year

The first sighting of daffodils each year makes my heart sing and evokes the fondest thoughts of my late mother and father, both of whom adored the flowers, and the poems associated with them.

Mother with Daffodils Photo: Frank Tubridy

Well, today was the day of days. I was driving from Passage East into Waterford City and there on a bank on the side of the road the gleam of yellow had me enthralled, with all thoughts of the political crisis in Northern Ireland, Brexit and the coming of Donald Trump disappearing from my cluttered mind.

Daffodil Road

I’m not sure if anyone can see daffodils without finding themselves quoting line after line of William Wordsworth’s The Daffodils. I certainly can’t as it is a poem that has embroidered my heart since I was a tot and the yellow threads grow deeper each year:

The Daffodils

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.

(William Wordsworth)

Heart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I gazed – and gazed …

I was driving in search of brightly painted houses the other morning when I saw the most welcome sight of the year so far … a bank of daffodils in bloom.

It was one of those perfect moments when Spring wrapped her loving arms around me.

As I stepped out of the car, a choir of birds were singing merrily overhead on the branches of a sunlit tree:

The Singing Tree

The scene was all sunlight and shadows; and as brightly painted as anyone could have wished for:

Primary Colours

So many thoughts as I knelt down to just be with the daffodils: that photo of Mother holding the bunch of daffodils;

Mother with Daffodils
Photo: Frank Tubridy

Dad standing at the kitchen window watching his daffodils blowing in the wind; me reading The Daffodils to Dad when he was in bed in those last few months of his life and him chiming in when I thought he was asleep …..

Tossing their Heads …

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

(William Wordsworth)

 

 

 

Stepping Out with Hope

Snowdrops

January is a month that is punctuated with sadness in my personal life and for that reason I seriously considered taking the month off from blogging ~ something I did last year.

I suspect that many personal bloggers feel like I do and don’t want to be either dumping their sadness on others, or blogging away pretending that everything is great ~ causing a major dose of cognitive dissonance.

The decision to blog on has proved to be a quite a revelation on a number of fronts. Firstly, the support from fellow bloggers when I have poured out my soul has been very comforting and healing and I thank you all very much for your comments.

Secondly, even though January is punctuated with sadnesses for me, the very act of blogging, especially around my words for the year, Stepping Out, has made me look at the present and also beyond just me.

Thus far, January has been fraught with many horrors on a global level and the events in Paris last week seem to call for a collective response, unity and connection of some sort.

And while all this has been unfolding, the snowdrops that grow under the Monkey Puzzle tree which looks in at me as I type here in the study in this little corner of Ireland, have been pushing their way up to the light in the bravest of brave ways.

They greeted me this morning, showing white. These are the flowers that my mother adored and which will forever be associated with her in my mind.

But they are also symbols of the bravery and hope that we all need as we navigate our way through January and beyond.

How I wish the world could/would stand arm in arm beneath the Monkey Puzzle and read William Wordsworth’s profound words in unison:

TO A SNOWDROP

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

(William Wordsworth 1819)

 

A Dappled Feast

I woke to thick mist on Sunday morning and  a mad longing to find my anchorage in Mount Congreve Garden. A tiny patch of blue eventually forced its way through and I ran out of the sleeping house to be greeted by a Mount Congreve that I had never witnessed there before ~ dancing colours, shadows and a luxurious vibrancy that made my heart sing.

While I’d been waiting for the mist to lift, I’d ascertained that Sunday (April 6) was the day that William Wordsworth had been appointed Poet Laureate in 1843. The daffodils in Mount Congreve were in full bloom and as I walked down the avenue, I heard a woman saying to her male companion: You can certainly see what William Wordsworth was talking about. It took every ounce of restraint not to burst into the last stanza of The Daffodils which has punctuated my life in so many ways:

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. 

(William Wordsworth)

 

And, as I wandered through the magnificent gardens, W.B. Yeats seemed to be everywhere with his great lines from The Song of Wandering Aengus:

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

 

So here’s a hint of  what unfolded during my wanderings:

 

Remember that Mount Congreve Gardens are open each Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10am-5.30.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Poetry Lives On ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 127

April 23rd is a day which marks the deaths of four outstanding poets:

William Shakespeare ~ 1616

Henry Vaughan ~ 1695

William Wordsworth ~ 1850

Rupert Brooke ~ 1915

The works of all these men have been highly significant in my life from childhood onwards and I can’t but think today of my mother drawing on Shakespeare to advise with these oft quoted words:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
(From Hamlet Act 1, Scene 3)

On starry nights, I am propelled back to learning poetry in school and these lines from Henry Vaughan come flowing back as if I was still sitting in the classroom overlooking the Boyne River in Drogheda, Co. Louth:

 If thou canst get but thither,

There grows the flow’r of peace,

The rose that cannot wither,

 Thy fortress, and thy ease.

(from Peace by Henry Vaughan)

William Wordsworth, more than any of the poets, has permeated my entire life and his poem The Daffodils stands out from my rendition of in an elocution competition when I was eight or nine, to visiting Dove Cottage in the Lake District with my sister in my teens, to reading the poem to my late father in his last months.  I doubt these precious lines will ever leave me:

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. 

(from The Daffodils by William Wordsworth)

Rupert Brooke brings me back to Mother’s love of poetry and her wonderful way of using extracts from poems to soothe. These particular lines remind me of nights of childhood illness when Mother would lie down beside me and lull me to sleep with her gentle, calming voice:

And through the dreadful hours
The trees and waters and the hills have kept
The sacred vigil while you slept,
And lay a way of dew and flowers
Where your feet, your morning feet, shall tread.

(from The Charm by Rupert Brooke).

 

Daffodils ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 100

The Daffodils on the Tramore- Annestown Road, Co. Waterford.

Today is Daffodil Day in Ireland. It is a huge day in terms of collecting funds for ‘Daffodiil Nurses’ or nurses who provide palliative care. These nurses are like ‘angels’ to people who wish to live out their last days at home. Only last week, I was at the funeral of a dear friend and the lone tear that was shed by the people speaking from the altar was in connection with thanking the Daffodil Nurses who had been so supportive and helpful to both my friend who had died and his family who had cared for him at home where he so badly wanted to be.

Anyone who follows me will know that daffodils have huge significance in my life as they remind me so much of my late father with whom I was fortunate to share many, many evenings in his last months reading Wordsworth’s  The Daffodils.  He especially loved the lines:

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I am very aware that this is the 100th posting of  my ‘Gatherings from Ireland’ and I really wanted it to be extra-special.

That  I can write it on Daffodil Day and remember Father with such love makes it immensely special to me.

Dad and The Daffodils ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 53

This morning, February 4, 2013, I was greeted by the sight of two daffodils in full bloom in my garden here in Tramore, Co. Waterford.   I readily admit that I went out to greet them in my mish-mish of a dressing-gown and wellies.  All thoughts flew to my late father, especially when I saw the pair lean in towards each other as if having a private chat.

I couldn’t but smile as I thought of Dad saying to me, as he so often did:  You’d swear  you had bloody Kew Gardens up there,  the way you’re talking.

Kew Gardens is on my list of places to visit but for now my two perfect daffodils  are reminding me of a lifetime’s connection to these brightest of bright flowers. Here is a piece that I posted way back in the early days of this blog which I wrote for the Memory Bridge Foundation, an organisation which spells hope, happiness and humanity for me in terms of thought and action in relation to people with Alzheimers  Disease and other dementias

http://www.memorybridge.org/

THE DAFFODILS

One of my proudest moments in primary school was coming second in a class competition reciting a poem. I had chosen The Daffodils by William Wordsworth. The winner recited I am a Little Teapot and I remember well how she acted out all the different parts brilliantly and rightfully won the prize of a bar of rose-scented soap.

 After I finished my Leaving Certificate, my older sister brought me on a hostelling trip around the Lake District in England.  We visited the romantic, old-world Dove Cottage in Grasmere, where Wordsworth composed most of his great poems, including The Daffodils. I lingered and lingered there trying to soak up every detail of this overwhelmingly inspirational place.

 Thirty-five years on, Wordsworth and The Daffodils have re-entered my life, as I share treasured moments reading poetry to my Father who is in his ninety-first year and confined to bed. He has had memory problems for a number of years now. I would never have associated Dad with poetry but, by chance, one evening I took out an anthology of Best Loved Poems and started reading to him as he was too tired to talk. When I reached the last verse of The Daffodils, I heard his sleepy voice chime in with mine ‘And then my heart with pleasure fills/And dances with the daffodils’.  His pensive eyes met mine that evening, as they have on so many evenings since, with a glow of connection that draws us together on a memory bridge built of time, colour, laughter and love.

                   ********************************************

Dad died very peacefully at home in September, 2010.

six weeks since you died;

I planted daffodils

to keep you alive

 

Snowdrops of Hope

Snowdrops mean more to me than any other flower. They represent hope; light in darkness; continuity; and most of all connection to my late mother. 

Mother was a true lover of nature and was also a diarist from when she was able to write. Looking through her diaries from the 1920s to the early 200os, the common denominator for January was her entry for her first sighting of a snowdrop ‘showing white,’ as she always put it. 

Her birthday was on January 29th and from the time I had my own garden, I would bring her a little ‘bouquet’ of snowdrops to mark the day.  No matter what the weather, the snowdrops never failed to bloom for her birthday, though there were some very close calls. 

Amazingly, it wasn’t until after she died that I discovered that  William Wordsworth had written a poem about snowdrops:

TO A SNOWDROP

LONE Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

Yesterday evening I was out in the garden planting up a pot with bright yellow primulas in memory of  my first love, who died on January 5th, 1981, when I was in my early twenties.  I was thinking about the degree to which my mother had supported me through that major loss and encouraged me to both write and find solace in the wonders of nature.  She adored perennials and passed this love on to me  ~ a year punctuated by snowdrops, primroses, daffodils, bluebells, honeysuckle, agapanthus, nerines and holly.

Just as I was thinking about all this and her love of the moon, the changing tides, rainbows ….. I stood up to admire my pot of golden primulas which I could now barely see as night had closed in.  Then out of  the very corner of my eye, I saw a tiny white glow under the Monkey Puzzle tree.  Surely too early for snowdrops!  But no, two tiny buds were ‘showing white,’  and showing me that Mother’s presence will never die and will no doubt sparkle at the times when I miss her most.