William Wordsworth

1770-1850
William Wordsworth
 Born in rural Lake District in the northwest of
England
 His poetry often celebrates the beauty and
spiritual values of nature
 1798 – he and his fellow poet, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge revolutionized English poetry with the
publication of Lyrical Ballads, which used the
language of ordinary people rather than the
stylized idioms of the upper classes
 This book launched the literary movement in
England known as romanticism
Romanticism
 Valued emotion over reason and the senses
over intellect and held that the creative spirit
of the artist was more important than
following formal rules and conventions
 At first, the critics harshly attacked his

innovation but later they realized that the

revolutionary changes are accepted by the
masses
 1843 – Wordsworth was named England’s

poet laureate
I wandered lonely as a cloud
 The speaker describes the act of watching a
patch of country daffodils swaying in the
breeze and the lasting effect of this pleasant
image on his quiet moments of reverie
thereafter.
 Actualizing the emotional virtue of romantic

poetry itself
I wandered lonely as a cloud
(Daffodils)

 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
I wandered lonely as a cloud
(Daffodils)

 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.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
(Daffodils)

 The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
(Daffodils)

 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.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
(Daffodils)
The speaker says that, wandering like a cloud
floating above hills and valleys, he
encountered a field of daffodils beside a lake.
 The dancing, fluttering flowers stretched

endlessly along the shore, and though the

waves of the lake danced beside the flowers,
the daffodils out did the water in glee.
 The speaker says that a poet could not help

but be happy in such a joyful company of

flowers.
I wondered lonely as a cloud
 He says that he stared and stared, but did not
realize what wealth the scene would bring
him.

 For now, whenever he feels “vacant” or

“pensive,” the memory flashes upon “that
inward eye / That is the bliss of solitude,” and
his heart fills with pleasure, “and dances with
the daffodils.”
Form

The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow

a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: ABABCC.
 Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.
Commentary
 This simple poem, one of the loveliest and
most famous in the Wordsworth canon,
revisits the familiar subjects of nature and
memory, this time with a particularly (simple)
spare, musical eloquence.
 The plot is extremely simple, depicting the

poet’s wandering and his discovery of a field

of daffodils by a lake, the memory of which
pleases him and comforts him when he is
lonely, bored, or restless.
The poem
 The characterization of the sudden occurrence of a
memory—the daffodils “flash upon the inward
eye / Which is the bliss of solitude”—is
psychologically acute, but the poem’s main
brilliance lies in the reverse personification of its
early stanzas.
 The speaker is metaphorically compared to a

natural object, a cloud—“I wandered lonely as a

cloud / That floats on high...”, and the daffodils are
continually personified as human beings, dancing
and “tossing their heads” in “a crowd, a host.
The Poem

 This technique implies an inherent unity

between man and nature, making it one of
Wordsworth’s most basic and effective
methods for instilling in the reader the
feeling the poet so often describes himself as
experiencing.
Commentary
 The poem opens with the speaker describing his
action of walking in a state of worldly
detachment: his wandering “As lonely as a cloud
/ That floats on high o'er vales and hills,” (1-2). 
 What he is thinking of we never really uncover,

but his description leaves us to analyze his

words as a sort of “head in the clouds”
daydream-like state where his thoughts are far
away, unconcerned with the immediate
circumstances in which he finds himself.
The poem
 Wordsworth, ever the Romanticist, perhaps
uses these two introductory lines to describe
the disconnected and dispassionate ways that
we all live our lives; walking through life in a
haze of daily ritual and monotonous
distractions in a pointless and spiritually
disinterested state where we fail as emotional
creatures to appreciate the quiet beauties of
life that we as human beings need for
spiritual sustenance. 
The poem

 William Wordsworth’s “lonely cloud” is our

own private impersonal perception of the
world, floating miles above it and missing the
quiet virtues of nature, beauty, and other
sources of emotional nourishment.
The poem

 As William Wordsworth’s narrator is walking,

he notices “A host, of golden daffodils;…
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” (4 and
6).  Wordsworth goes on to describe these
“golden daffodils” as a vast plot of swaying
flowers around the fringes of a bay, outdoing
the beauty of the ocean’s waves with their
own golden oscillation.
The poem

 Describing the daffodils for the next several

lines, Wordsworth helps us to visualize what
he himself has seen and was so moved by;
“Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. / The
waves beside them danced; but they / Out-
did the sparkling waves in glee” (12-14).
The poem
 These light-hearted daffodils, weaving in
unison with each other in the wind, have
romantically touched Wordsworth, their
natural beauty reaching him in ways that he
describes as not fully understanding until
later: “A poet could not but be gay, / In such
a jocund company: / I gazed - and gazed -
but little thought / What wealth the show to
me had brought:” (15-18). 
The poem
 draws inspiration from nature’s beauty to
experience a deep and meaningful emotion
within himself as a philosopher and a poet

 natures beauty induces in Wordsworth a deep

and powerful mourning for how mankind has
perverted his own nature in his then modern
society
The poem
 The speaker reciprocally, upon relaxing on a
couch in quiet contemplation, is elated and
pleasantly entertained by the thoughts of the
daffodils dancing in his memory: “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.” (19-24).
The poem
 Wordsworth believes that any human being
possessing a soul and beating heart would find
themselves deeply touched by the scene of a
thousand-fold host of yellow daffodils swaying in
the breeze against the backdrop of waves breaking
against the rocks of a bay. 
 This mental image, otherwise missed by those
caught up in their daily bustle and contemporary
distractions, their “wandering lonely as clouds” so to
speak, is what we draw from nature and experience
when we cease our self-destructive pace. 
The poem

 If we slow down, just enough, we may catch

by the wayside of our wanderings a spiritual
creature that could serve us as a pleasant
mental image or perhaps even as a meaning
or purpose in life. 
The poem
 the daffodils are much more than mere
flowers. 
 They are a symbol of natural beauty and,

more importantly, symbolize living a life as

rich in experience and sensation as would
make a life worth living. 
 They represent, in their light-hearted dance,

the joy and happiness of living an adoring

and fulfilling life, embracing it for every drop
of nectar it could so bring. 
The poem
 narrator in “Daffodils” has taken from the
moment the sweet nourishment of spiritual
manna that was necessary to keep a quiet
instance of introspection from turning to
depression and, instead, becoming an
exuberant reverie of a setting in memory;
“They flash upon that inward eye / Which is
the bliss of solitude; / And then my heart
with pleasure fills, / And dances with the
daffodils.” (21-24).
The poem
 Romanticism’s philosophy of embracing not
only nature but the careful expression of the
poet’s emotions through art and how nature
can so deeply affect it, is expressed in four
simple stanzas if imagery in the poem.
 The popular title for Wordsworth’s “I

Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “Daffodils”, has

in a single word summed an entire literary
philosophy.
THANK YOU