Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems

36 PA RT O N E

William used to read her journal in the evenings, so his vision—

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 dancing Daffodils;

Along the lake, beneath the trees,

Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

—sounds more like collaboration. And William, we want to ask, “Why lonely?”
A fortnight later, having seen a “glorious wild” waterfall, Dorothy and her
brother met Coleridge: “Wm and C. repeated and read verses. I drank a little
brandy and water and was in Heaven.” With or without brandy, she had every bit
as vivid a sense of nature as they did. Coleridge calls “her eye watchful in minutest
observation of nature.” Her journals dazzle with imaginings of light and motion:

27th January 1798 ... while we were in the wood the moon burst through the

invisible veil which enveloped her, the shadows of the oaks blackened, and

their lines became more strongly marked. The withered leaves were colored

with a deeper yellow, a brighter gloss spotted the hollies.

31st.The hawthorn hedges, black and pointed, glittering with millions of

Dorothy Wordsworth, anonymous silhouette.

Dove Cottage, Wordsworth Trust.