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 Entertainment | April 2007 
Lonely As a #@% Cloud? Wordsworth Raps
 NZPA
It was first published 200 years ago this year and has become England’s most easily-recognised poem. Now, William Wordsworth’s best known work has been given a 21st century upgrade.
London - The contemplative poems of William Wordsworth have drawn lovers of literature to England's peaceful lake district for two centuries. Even without a hip hop beat.
But in an effort to make the region's most famous poet more relevant to a younger audience, local tourism officials have released a rap version of Wordsworth's 200-year-old classic of Romantic verse "I wandered lonely as a cloud".
The re-working manages to "stay true to the original sentiment with some slight variation of the lyrics", Cumbria Tourism insisted.
Accompanying the hip-hop theme on its Web site is a video featuring "MC Nuts," a giant dancing red squirrel.
A spokesman for Cumbria Tourism said the song shows how "modern-day rap and its clever use of wordplay is a distant relative of poetic rhyming verse".
Wordsworth wrote the poem about the "bliss of solitude" he felt after observing a field of daffodils on the shores of Lake Ullswater.
The opening paragraph, memorised by schoolchildren around the globe, is now changed to:
I wandered lonely along as if I was a cloud/
That floats on high over vales and hills/
When all at once I looked down and saw a crowd/
And in my path there was a host of golden daffodils so check it.
The spokesman added: "Wordsworth's Daffodils poem has remained unchanged for 200 years and to keep it alive for another two more centuries we wanted to engage the YouTube generation who want modern music and amusing video footage on the web."
"Hopefully, this will help them connect with poetry, the works of Wordsworth and the stunning landscape of the Lake District which inspired him."
The video can be viewed at: GoLakes.co.uk. |
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