Wordsworth given nutty remix

Wordsworth wrote the poem about the “bliss of solitude” he felt after observing a field of daffodils on the shores of Lake Ullswater.

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Wordsworth rap: Cumbria the Lake District

A spokesman for Cumbria Tourism said the song shows how “modern-day rap and its clever use of wordplay is a distant relative of poetic rhyming verse”.

“Wordsworth’s ‘daffodils’ poem has remained unchanged for 200 years and to keep it alive for another two more centuries we wanted to engage the YouTube generation who want modern music and amusing video footage on the web,” he said.

 

The new, happening version of the verse achieves this instant street cred by using devices such as artfully appending the words “check it” to the end of a line.
   
“Hopefully, this will help them connect with poetry, the works of Wordsworth and the stunning landscape of the Lake District which inspired him,” the spokesman said.

The Wordsworth Trust says the poem was composed in 1804, two years after Wordsworth saw the flowers on the shores of Lake Ullswater – now one of the last remaining strongholds of the Lake District red squirrel.

Wordsworth was inspired by an entry in his sister’s journal in which she described how the daffodils: “Tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake.”

David Wilson, director of the Wordsworth Trust, said: “It is a poem about the mind’s growing awareness over time of the deepening value of an experience, in this case observing the dancing daffodils.

 

“Two hundred years after it was published, the poem is still reaching new audiences and inspiring people.”