adventure

Wanderer

Wordsworth, eat your heart out

image courtesy of Penn State University Extension

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When I was a young teenager, say thirteen or fourteen or so, there was an early evening hour-long drama on TV which had a saying at the beginning of every episode, going something like this: “Two’s company, Three’s a crowd, One is a wanderer.” A bodiless voice intoned these words as though they were a sort of doom. Or a curse. Or a blessing in disguise.

I no longer remember the title of the show, though it may very well have been those last four words. “One is a wanderer.” Nor do I remember any of the plot-lines, nor any of the stars, nor the director, nor anything else. Not even the music, though I usually pay very close attention to the music. Just that saying, which stuck with me then, and still sticks with me to this day.

It wasn’t till I got to college, years later, that I encountered the poem by William Wordsworth entitled ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ which is also known as ‘Daffodils.’ The poem immediately reminded me of the TV show. Not that the show had any daffodils in it. It didn’t. As I recall, it didn’t even have a cloud. But it did have loneliness. And wandering.

In the poem, Wordsworth encounters a field of ten thousand daffodils. (I’m rather…