Gravrelief. Stående kvinde mod h. med due
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This is a plaster cast (gipsafstøbning) reproducing a funerary relief—a type of carved monument made to mark or adorn a grave. The composition shows a standing woman facing right, holding a dove.
The original work's maker is unrecorded; the piece is attributed to an unknown artist (Ubekendt). Plaster casts like this were widely produced to document and disseminate sculptural works, allowing study collections to hold copies of originals that might otherwise be inaccessible.
The cast belongs to the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst, SMK), which holds a substantial body of such reproductions of classical and historical sculpture.
Background drawn from SMK — National Gallery of Denmark
Today's poem
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
I wandered 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 stretched 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 leaves in glee; A poet could not be but 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.
William Wordsworth · Public domain
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William Wordsworth helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with his joint publication, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of *Lyrical Ballads* (1798). As an English Romantic poet, his work reflects the movement's emphasis on nature, feeling, and the individual imagination.
"I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" is built from four six-line stanzas with a regular rhyme scheme, each closing in a couplet. The poem describes the speaker coming upon a vast field of daffodils beside a lake, "fluttering and dancing in the breeze," and compares them to the stars of the Milky Way stretching in a "never-ending line."
Its central idea is the lasting value of the remembered scene. The speaker notes that at the time he "little thought / What wealth the show to me had brought"; later, in idle or reflective moments, the daffodils return to his "inward eye," and his heart "dances with the daffodils."
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia