The March of Daffodils

The month of March is here. It's the month of colours (Holi), the month of Woman's day and how can I forget……. It's the month of exams.

I remember slogging my *** off in school during the month of March. Coz that was the month when I finally woke up, realized the enormous amount of lessons I had to study, panic on whether I would be able to finish them before the exams begun, set into an absolutely biologically impossible rhythm trying to finish off the enormous portions in an absolutely limited time frame and finally bow down to the powers of almighty to have me scrap through the exams with a decent percentage which would give me the courage to stand before my teachers & parents when I went to collect my marks card.

High School was particularly difficult for me for the simple reason that I choose to have my first language as English when compared to the horror of having to choose Sanskrit. I prefer to be bred as a decent English lady than being bred as a Sanskrit pundit wherein I wouldn't be using the language for any other reason than to get good grades during the 3 years of my high school.

So obviously the language of English was accompanied by its entire clan of phonetics, sentence formation, correct usage of words and dissecting the sentences into simple & complex sentences. Not to mention that the Subject itself was split up into Literature, grammar & poetry. How did I manage to get through those 3 years of absolute drudgery??? I still wonder about it sometimes!

As much as I hated doing all the boring work in the subject, what particularly interested me was the part of poetry. I loved 'The Daffodils' by William Wordsworth.

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

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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 stretch'd 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.

The poem is written so beautifully that each time I read it I went into a trace-like state where I could feel the summer breeze, smell the rich aroma of the woods, and feel myself drifting through a meadow filled with golden daffodils.

Wordsworth's Daffodils has been my favorite poem ever since. And each time I read it, it recreates the magic for me.