Of Wordsworth, and other wayward thoughts

Followers of my blips may have gathered that I am prone to earworms - the most recent being "Ubi Caritas" by Durufle - but I don't think I've mentioned poems before. My mother, who had a Glasgow MA very similar in content to my own (hers being conferred within 30 years of the first degree awarded by the university to a woman) was able to quote poetry by the yard at the age of 90; I grew up with a diet of quotations which as a child I imagined were the sole property of my family. When I began to study Shakespeare, Browning and other giants I found they were "full of quotations" and realised that my family life was a tad extraordinary. My legacy, I find, is to have stray lines of poetry suddenly insert themselves into my thoughts or, irritatingly I have no doubt, into my conversation. 

By now, if you're still here - and I'm so grateful to the lovely people who have been dropping by recently with their hearts and stars - you may well be wondering what the link might be with the sheep in the photo. All right. It's Wordsworth. According to my father, who for some unknown reason chose Wordsworth's Prelude as the basis for his MA dissertation, Wordsworth looked like a sheep. (He cared for the poet's work even less than I do, if that were possible.) I took the precaution of looking up some pictures of the man before I wrote this, as my father has not been around for the past 40+ years, and found a distinct resemblance to the fellow on the left. There were three sheep in this little field in Glen Massan, and they all ambled over to inspect us as we walked up the hill into the chilly upper regions this afternoon. 

It's that vaguely benign smile, and the disengaged look ...