In Wordsworth’s memory

I wait for Spring to wake and spark

This hamlet full of gold,

What better than these daffodils

To end the winter’s cold

 

Come September, these ochre blooms

(All shine in Rydal’s hearts,

Where lonesome do my mountains end

That’s where this valley starts)

 

Trumpets, doubles, tazettas

They bloom in yellow all,

In haste, the artist may mistake

Instead of Spring, its fall

 

Large swathes of garden teem and sway

As the flowers joyful dance

Ten thousand can you see and smile

All in a single glance

 

And for a handful span of weeks

A poem resurrects,

And Rydal pays her homage through

Her golden yellow flecks –

 

While Lake Lyell not faraway

Reminds of Windermere,

As devoted readers find indeed

Both pilgrimage and prayer

 

For a forlorn poet, it stirs my heart

A writer’s home they chose,

And a simple daffodil above

A Lotus or a rose

 

May a thousand muses bless you then,

In your mountain solitude,

Where we had failed to read this world,

You wrote and understood

 

Perhaps, Wordsworth smiles even today,

His words - strongest of all,

Showers hope, so far from home,

In an antique hamlet, small…

 

The tiny village of Rydal, near Lithgow towards the western end of the Blue Mountains, was named in the 1800s after Rydal in the UK, home to celebrated poet William Wordsworth. Nearly two centuries back, Rydal was a busy town, lying on the main highway that descended from the Blue Mountains and traversed the plains below. However the Great Western Highway bypassed this town, leading it to shrink over time. Today it stands as an antiquated sleepy hamlet – every September though, to remind the world of the origin of its moniker, Rydal celebrates the daffodil festival in loving memory of Wordworth and perhaps his most celebrated poem, dedicated to the same flowers. The village gardens and reserves get covered in all forms of daffodils making it an open-air living dedication and celebration to the legendary poet, and all those who walk in his footsteps in search of a handful of words to decorate the mundanity of everyday life…