Secret Smiles

After I shared these tiny (31/2 inch) sweet hearts with one of my book blogger friends who is still counting snow flakes, Jeanne at Necromancy Never Pays, it occurred to me that there might be others in need of cheering.

These are the first blooms in my yard every year and they grow in a place where only I, the gardener, ever see them.

They are my secret smiles, and now they can be yours too.

Oh. oh. I feel a poem coming on . . .

Daffodils
   - William Wordsworth

I wander'd 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 stretch'd 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.