My Gawd In Heaven!

It's the Wordsworth Rap:

A meditation on the enduring beauty of daffodils, it is not an obvious subject for the macho, posturing world of rap music.

Cumbria Tourism, which has released the new version of "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" to mark the 200th anniversary of the original, hopes the rap and accompanying video will appeal to the "YouTube generation".

What the foremost Lake Poet will make of the new version remains unclear.

The team responsible claims it stays true to the sentiment of the original, but Wordsworth purists may be shocked by the reference to daffodils "tossing up their heads like a pogo dance", and the hip-hop greeting "check it" thrown in near the start.

"Retina" is rhymed with "etcetera", not a word Wordsworth used frequently in his verse.

And the line "A poet could not but be gay" is dropped in favour of feeling "bright like sunbeam", perhaps in acknowledgement of the word's modern meaning, and the homophobia of hip-hop culture.

Even more bizarrely, the new version is accompanied by a pop video in which a giant squirrel - MC Nuts - mouths the words on the banks of Lake Ullswater.

It was while he was passing Ullswater on a stormy day that Wordsworth saw a "host of golden daffodils" which inspired the work.

A Cumbria Tourism spokesman said: "Wordsworth's Daffodils poem has remained unchanged for 200 years and to keep it alive for another two centuries we wanted to engage the YouTube generation who want modern music and amusing video footage on the web.

"Hopefully this will give them a reason to connect with a poem published in 1807 as well as with the works of Wordsworth and the stunning landscape of the Lake District."

You can follow the link to read the new "relevant" version and to see a video of it being "performed" by "MC Nut," the supposed "mascot" of the Lake District. (BTW, who knew there was a Lake District mascot? And some yobbo dressed up in a giant red squirrel costume, no less! This is what's left of Arthur's Kingdom?)

In the meantime, I'll be curled up over in the corner, feebly twitching and muttering, "O, tempora! O, mores! O, yo-yo-yo!"