Wordsworth’s “To the Small Celandine” celebrates the profound joy nature can offer, specifically on a micro level. One flower at one location has the power to change mood. “Poets, vain men in their mood,” travel, search, and seek beauty but miss the overwhelming beauty in their immediate surroundings. Wordsworth is saying to look at immediate nature and fathom. Some “eyes of men travel far for the finding of a star” shows men as seekers of happiness, but luckily, Wordsworth’s happiness is always in front of his face.
Wordsworth personifies the Celandine, giving it virtuous human characteristics. For example, the celandine is “careless of they neighbourhood.” It is satisfied wherever it is, is peaceful, and the “prophet of delight.” Also, the prophet of delight could signify an ability of the flower to fully delight someone in the future the way it currently does to Wordsworth. I find it interesting that although Wordsworth has passed the flower for “thirty years or more,” he is first now able to fully appreciate its effect on him, or rather allow the flower to effect him through watchfulness.
This poem truly flows with a thick tone of joy throughout. Its serves as an example to the power of nature to affect human affect. Nature becomes a visible art and a source of relief and satisfaction more powerful than any human invention.
Your comment intersects interestingly with David's post: is Wordsworth one of the poets that he chastises, or is he more like the cottager who sees the flower peeping outside her door? This question is an important one for the poem's relation to other literary representations of flowers: if Wordsworth aligns himself with the cottager more than other poets, what is the effect of this? Is he claiming that his poetry can capture something that other poems has neglected or missed? Is this a claim of poetic superiority?
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