Outside the Victorian walled garden of House for an Art Lover I took this photo as the sun momentarily peeked through the ever-present rain clouds.
Some years ago I acquired this book - with the gold embossed stamp 'Wordsworth' on the green cover - of my grandfathers (a classics scholar and a clergyman). Sure enough there was poem about snowdrops. It is Sonnet Sonnet XVI, composition date unknown but was published in 1819.
To a Snowdrop
Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows,
and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day
by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops,
waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a
friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise!
Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!
William WordsworthReference: The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Ed. Thomas Hutchinson, London Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press Warehouse, Ame Corner, E.C., 1905, page 266. Did he buy it in Stroud, where he was born, or in Canada?
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