Louise Lindsay Read

We celebrated the life and mourned the death and wept for the love for our dear Louise yesterday in Warren, CT in a packed church. Sam sang All is Well; Colin Lindsay played concertina (Fredric Paris tune) and Hallowell was sung by Colin and Rachel, Mary and Julia. The website Caringbridge.com kept hundreds of people informed and able to write in letters of love and concern; four readers read excerpts from the letters. And Wordsworth's poem about daffodils (which folks have planted for Louise) was read. The photos of the lakes are taken by my sister Annie just by Wordsworth's cottage in the Lake District.

"Daffodils" (1804)

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.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).