THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18479, 5 September 1925, Page 11

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (SPTCULLY WRITTETf TOE "THE TP-ESS.") By A. H. GamLiNG. CXXIX.—ON DAFFODILS. The daffodil is a welcome flower; it comes, exclaims Perdita in "Winter's Tale" before tho swallow dares, arid takes tho winds of March with beauty." Shakespeare loved flowers, and this reference to daffodils is part of\ what John Masefield: calls—and rightly—"A very lovely talk.'' "To Shakespeare." Mr Masefield adds; "the magically happy man, the going back to them (the flowers) must have been a time for thanksgiving. But to the supremely happy man all times are times cf thanksgiving, for the delight, the majesty and the beauty of tho fullness of the rolling world." Masefield is especially sensitive to this beauty, his soasitrveness comes out in the familiar lines appropriately headed '"Beauty''— I hare seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills, Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain; I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils, Bringing the springing grass and the soft Autumn rain. I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the «ea, And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships, But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has shown* to me, Are her voice, and her hair, and ey?s, and the dear red curve of her lips.

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," sang John Keats, illustrating the now familiar sentiment by saving, "And such are daffodils and the green world they live in." Masefield conptantlv associates daffodils with beautiful and desirable things. In "The West Wind," a poem which once read ever haunts the memory, lie exclaims:

"It's a -warm -wind, the west wind, full of ■birds' cries; I never hear tho west irind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from tho west lands, tho old brown hillts. And April's in the west nind and daffodils.'' In "The Daffodil Fields"—a poenx which is a variant upon "Enoch Arden"—Masefield' uses tJio beauty of tho daffodils as foil to tho tragedy of what he styles: "This old tale of woo among: tho daffodils." The daffodil theme runs right through tho poem from the opening stanzas:— Bfltrreeu tho barren pasture and the -wood. There is a patch of poultry-stricken crass Where, in old time, Ryeme»dow's Farmhouse stood, - And human fata brought tragic things to pass. A spring cornea bubbling up there, cold as glass, . It bubbles down, crusting tho leaves with lime. Babbling the solf-same song that it haa sung through time.

Under tho Toad it runs, -and now it slipa Tast tho great ploughland, babbling, drop nnd linn, To tho moss'd stumps of elm trees which it lips, And blaekborrjr bramble-trails Tvfiero eddies spin, Then on its left, somo short-grassed fields begin, Red-clayed and pleasant, which tho young spring fi"s With tho never quiet joy of dancing daffodils.

Thero are three fields where daffodils are found; Tho grass is dotted blue-gray with their leaves: Tbpi* nodding bennty shakes along the ground TJp to a fir clnmp, shotting out the eaves Of an old farm where always tha wind grieves High in the fir boughs, mounting; peopla call i This farm, Tha Roughs hut some call it tho Poor Maid's Hall. '

And thera tha pickers cqipe, picking for town, Those dancing daffodils; all day they pick; Hard-featured - women, brown. Of swarthy red, the colour of/>ld brick. At noon they break their meats under the riok. 'Ha Bmoke of all three farms lifts blue in air, As though maji's passionate mind had nevor Buffered there.

The cfaffodil theme recurs and recurs ; Mary, Lion and' Michael are pictured:

"What joy they took Picking the daffodils."

Of Mary and Lion, it is told: — "Out they went Into the roaring woodland, Daffodils glimmered under foot: And down the valley, with little clucks and trills. The dancing waters danced by dancing daffodils." When Michael does not return, Mary ia heart-broken. \

Then in the dusk she wandered down the brook, Treading again the trspkway trod of old, When she could hold her loved one in a " loqk. The night was all unlike those nights of old, ICtehaol was gone, and all the April old. Withered and hidden. Life was full of ills; ShO flung her down and cried i thp withered daffodils.

Tennyson in "Tho Progress of Spring" reverts to the old-fashioned name of the daffodil and says, "the gay lentlilies wave," but in "The Princess' he makes mention of an "April dilly." A critic in the pointed out that. ttafipdrTs came in March. At once Tennyson with the passion for accuracy in matters of cj&Uil for which he was famous, wrote: "Daffodils in the North of Lneland bcloncr ag much to April a§ to Marci. On the" loth •of April in the streets of r>nhlin I remember a man presenting me with a handful of daffodils." In an Anthology of American ongifi entitled "AH tho Year in the Garden, and which contains a number of seasonable quotations for every day in the year daffodils aro introduced on April ofith'with some Sines by Samh J. Dav taken from ''Mayflowers to Mistletoe. The lines are of interest as «mne the daffodil its qua+nt okl-faahioned title.

t, «w*n-ndillv tho maid in tha garden, Tho 'hild a' the wicket U lookup for „ meadows, inbudded the thicket, mingiS the cloud, with the Coma ™m! daffodil, golden and W

S "I wandered lonely n o riond " are so familiar 83 to r£ e S the hackneyed. is i Sarm about those lines which reniS tiem immortal m true poetry 1 - , no t breed contempt, ? CTrick es -

V-ir daffodils, we weep to W« You haste away so »oon, . (h, early-rmtng sun Haa not attained his neon. Stay, star. Until the h astlll £ day Has run n,it to the even-son*: Arf b U ating d ,Me h rr Will go with you aionj-

»«t eolmnn.)

■\Va have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a sprinc; As quick a growth to meet decay, Ajs you, or anything.' Wo die As your hours do, and dry Away, "Like to the Summer's rain; Or as tho pearls of morning's dew Ne'er to bo found again.

"Wordsworth's lines were composed in 1804*, twelve years after the birth of his daughter by Annette v allon and when he had met Man' Hutchinson and had become convinced that "the "happiness of his life would lie found in a marriage with the gentle and quiet English girl who knew and loved rustic life so well." It was m this frame of mind that Wordsworth wrote:—

I wander'd lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hUla, When all at once 1 saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils: Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the star* that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretrh'd in never-ending ljno Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw X at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance,

The -vrayeu beside th<-m danced, but they Outdid the spark f g waves in glee: A poet could not be but gay In such a jocund company: x gazed—and (razed —but little thought What "wealth the show to me had brought,

For oft, when 011 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.

\ jxiem not so woII known and only to* l>e found in a few anthologies is Michael Drayton's ( ;JDaffodill." Drayton who was *born iu 15G3 and who died ill 1631, wrote a, set of eclogues entitled, " Sfaepheard's Mirrour. Drayton was in the habit of refashioning his songs, and his poetry was of uistinetly slow growth, ! lit Drayton wrote and published f-.onie iMistoraJs called "Idea: The Shepheard's warland," fashioned in "nine eologs." on the model of Spenser s apd the beautiful Daffodill song, one of the most fragrant of Drayton's lyncs was enwrought in the ninth eclogue of the 1606 version:—

BATTK: , . Gobbo, as thou cam ?t tins -way By yonder little: hill. . , Or thou thrpugh the fields did st stray, BawSt thou my dafifodill?

She's in n frock of Lincoln green, Which colour likes her sight. And never hath her heauty seen But through a veil of white.

Than roses richer to behold That trim up lovers' bowers The pansy and the marigold Tbo' Phoebus' paramours.

GOBBO: Thou well deacnb'st the a&nociiil. It is not full an hour Since by the spring on yonder hill X saw that lovely flower.

BATTE: Yet my fair flower toon did et- not meet Nor news of her did'fifc bring. And vet mv daffodill's more sweet Than "that by yonder spring.

GOBBO: j . . I saw a shepherd that doth keep In yonder field of lilies, Wu making (as he fed his shesp) A wreath of daffodillies.

BATTE * Yet, Gobbo, thon delnd'st me still; My flower thou didst not sen, Sax, know, my pretty daffodill Is worn of none but me.

To show itself bnt nej(r her feet, No lily is 60 bold. Except to hide her from the neat, ' Or keep her from the cold.

GOBBO: ~ Xkrough yooder vale as I did pus, Descending from the hill, I met, a smirking bonny _ lass; They call her Daffodill.

Whose presence 83 alone she went The pretty flowers did greet. As though their heads they downward bant With homage to her feet.

A T>fl all tho shephfirda thai were nigh, From top of every hill. Unto the valley loud did C3 J. "There goes sweet Daffodill.

BATTE: . Ay, gastle aheplwd, now with jcgr, all my dart fill That's she «Jpn«"lpind shepherd boy; lot UQ to I>a#cdilh