I wandered lonely as a cloud, aiight

Wordsworth paid tribute to the daffodil in his famous poem. Photograph: Garry Weaser
Two hundred years after wandering through drifts of spring flowers in the Lake District, William Wordsworth has finally been given a pop video and rap version of his famous poem on daffodils.


Bouncing past tearooms and hotel discos, as well as the bay on Ullswater where the poem was inspired, the rapping rodent - a local busker in red fur - marks the bicentenary of the poem's publication.

"Wordsworth's Daffodils poem has remained unchanged for 200 years," said a spokeswoman for the Cumbria tourist board. "To keep it alive for another two centuries, we want to engage the YouTube generation who go for modern music and amusing video footage on the web."

The board, itself repackaged as GoLakes, has a growing modern musical reputation, with pop chart success last year for its flock of singing' sheep. Their World Cup song was a major hit, which was reprised at Christmas with a carol version.

The rap sticks to the essentials of Daffodils while updating terms or phrasing which were more the thing in 1807 than they are today. Wordsworth, for example, never slipped in the neat dactyl: "Check it!"

But it misses out on one claim, ever popular with bored English Lit classes, that Wordsworth originally wrote: "I wandered lonely as a cow." The simile is said to have been changed on the advice of his more worldly-wise sister, Dorothy.

Notorious for occasional lapses into such doggerel, the poet laureate was no friend of mass tourism. He sent the then prime minister, William Gladstone, a poem in 1844 condemning the proposed railway to Windermere, which now brings thousands of young people to the Lakes.

A nimby tract which would also lend itself to rap delivery, it starts: "Is there no nook of English ground secure/From rash assault...?"

The new Daffodils was welcomed, however, by the Wordsworth Trust, which is based at the poet's home at Dove Cottage, in Grasmere, and is a major Lakes attraction.

Trust director David Wilson said: "Part of our work is demonstrating how Wordsworth's poetry is relevant today and encouraging young people to enrich their lives by exploring his poetry in their own ways. Two hundred years after it was published, the poem can still reach new audiences and inspire them."

The rap can be heard at http://www.golakes.co.uk/wordsworthrap