BROOKE ASTOR

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Thank you for your letter of April 24th. I think your class project sounds wonderful and I hope it is an enormous success.

My favorite poem is “The Daffodil“ by William Wordsworth because it is lighthearted and gay and brings to mind such beautiful images. In the Spring, my garden is filled with golden daffodils which are a glorious sight to behold, and when the winter comes, I can close my eyes and see them “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” and my heart is uplifted and filled with joy. I have enclosed a copy of the poem for your book.

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I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

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.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched 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.

— William Wordsworth

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