By : Robert Scott

All writers in Op Ed are here to inform and acknowledge issues of importance to our communities, however these writings represent the views  and opinions of the authors and not necessarily of The Advertiser. 

The state, national, and global news is entirely taken up by the COVID-19 pandemic. People everywhere are taking ill, the counties around Edgefield all have positive cases (and Edgefield County, too, will likely have positive cases by the time you read this column), and for some few the disease can prove deadly. But Mother Nature seems not to have noticed, despite pleas from the Augusta National to hold off Spring for a month or two. 

What can we do? Quarantined or not, we can stop to smell the roses. We can count our many blessings. Life is still good, and although daffodils have come and many are now gone, there are still plenty blossoming in my side yard – and, I hope, in yours, too. I ran a poem about that last year, and it seems if anything more appropriate now than then. Here, to help us all escape into the pleasure of poetry, is “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” by William Wordsworth.

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 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 stretched 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.