April 7: Nature Guided His Pen (Vol. 41, pp. 639-651)

On this day in 1770, the English poet William Wordsworth was born. We get the famous daffodil poem, and that first stanza tells you all you need to know about his work:

"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."

He did love nature, but his poems laid it on thick in the way that all of his English contemporaries lay it on. Springtime doggerel.