Daffodil Time

 It's daffodil time, and this morning Radio 3's Poem of the Day was the inevitable 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' (a meaningless opening line unless you follow it past the enjambment into the next: there's nothing intrinsically lonely about a cloud. And Wordsworth wasn't 'lonely' either: he was walking with his sister Dorothy, whose journal entry inspired the poem.) It's a piece that is perfect in its way – as a (mercifully) succinct expression of Wordsworth's poetical philosophy, and as an effective, easily learned recitation piece.
For myself, when it comes to daffodil poetry, I would plump for Robert Herrick's equally perfect 'To Daffodils', a poem from which the word 'I' is refreshingly absent. Herrick does not present himself as a lone sensitive soul vibrating in sympathy with divine Nature – in fact he doesn't present himself at all: his poem is about what 'we' might feel, an inclusive and inviting 'we', not the exclusive, attention-seeking 'I'. It is simple (effortlessly concealing its art) and direct, and beautifully expresses the transience of all things, daffodils and 'we' humans alike...

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attain'd his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having pray'd together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or anything.

We die

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer's rain;

Or as the pearls of morning's dew,

Ne'er to be found again.