I Hate Daffodils

Not everyone these days is inspired so positively by daffodils as
Wordsworth was - maybe because we just don't see the wild daffodils he did:

"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."

Acid Reign
by Stephen Anderton
Published in the Spectator, 14 September 1991
submitted by supporter Richard Still

I motored homeward with the crowd
That sits on tails and queues up hills
When all at once – I cried aloud –
Another slab of daffodils;
Despite the salt, beneath the trees,
Where'er I looked, this bright disease.

Continuous as the cars that grind
And rumble all the working day,
The stretched their never-blending kinds
Along the urban motorway;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Nodding their heads, St Vitus' dance.

The sun above them flamed; but they
Upstaged the sun chromatically;
My eyes could not be dragged away,
From this naïve and trite display.
I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What loss to me the show had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In what should be a pensive mood,
That flash upon that inward eye,
The vegetable platitude!
And then my heart with horror fills
And winces at the daffodils.

This poem by misharialadwani is on the Guardian Books Blog

Dear God, how I hate daffodils and lilacs by the door,
The leaden greyness spring-time kills is something I adore,
I much prefer the dark and gloom, it suits my savage mood,
As perched atop a sharp-etched rock I sulk and hate and brood

A WEED
submitted by supporter Colin Perkins:

A WEED is a plant in the wrong place growing.
In the lane there are daffodils blowing
Their own trumpets, and looking
Gaudy and out of place.
People have planted them there;
People who obviously care
And would never think to deface;
Yet try to improve on what was there first,
The plants that grow in the river immersed
And the primroses, celandines, butterbur, gorse.
Daffodils meant as a garden resource
Are not what the beautiful countryside needs
And thus they are weed

NAFFODILS

submitted by supporter Iain Sinclair

I followed the motley crowd

Wandering down the village lane

Then overhead there burst a cloud

And it thundered down with rain

And out came the brollies

As up came the breeze

While the kids sucked their lollies

And huddled ‘neath the trees

But at last the rain abated

And the trippers trundled on

Until with laconic tone I stated;

May I ask what’s going on

We’ve come to see the daffodils

You’ll see them in a minute

And there they were with yellow frills

Lining every verge and thicket

Eating their cake and supping tea

The people gazed with horror

Spluttering and choking on their knees

Were flowers bent double in squalor

For the storm had wrecked their song

Fore-weakened by the traffic and dirt

False planted to indulge the throng

Little thought for the damage and hurt

Of flowers like game bred for sport

That seldom ends up on the table

Far from indigenous. An import.

Exploiting Wordsworth’s fable

Of freedom in the vales and hills

And nature’s natural splendour

But who planted his daffodils

What do we know of their candour

If you have poems about daffodils planted in the wrong place, please email them to us
and they can join this anthology.