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Unit 17: Daffodils by William Wordsworth

lasting effect this pleasant image has on his quiet moments of reverie thereafter. But, perhaps Notes
in this simple four stanza poem, William Wordsworth has, in writing “I Wandered Lonely as
a Cloud”, succeeded in creating one of his greatest works of Romantic poetry by so perfectly
actualizing the emotional virtue of Romantic poetry itself.

Did u know? William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was a Romantic poet and a major influence
in bringing about the 18th centuries’ Romantic Age of Literature.

An original poet for many different artistic qualities, his personality and emotional intelligence
had made him the perfect forefather for a literary movement that would resound philosophically
and poetically to this day. Romanticism, defined by it predisposition towards nature and its
deep emotional connection with the feelings of the poet, is what makes William Wordsworth’s
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” such a perfect example of Romantic poetry.

Another literary revolution realized by William Wordsworth, for the sake of anyone who
wanted to read his works, was his acceptance of all forms of readership and choosing to write
in very plain English. His writing was a movement away from those of his peers, who wrote
specifically for educated aristocrats and the intellectual elites who were, at this time, the major
consumers of poetry. Instead he wrote for the average Englishman. The very fact that William
Wordsworth’s “I Wander Lonely as a Cloud” is more popularly known as “Daffodils” is
evidence to the poem’s significantly broader circulation and distribution in areas where “Daffodils”
readership was less concerned with the formality of the poem and instead appreciated it, quite
literally, for the “Daffodils”.
The poem is 24 lines long, consisting of four six-line stanzas. Each stanza is formed by a
quatrain, then a couplet, to form a sestet and a ABABCC rhyme scheme. The fourth- and third-
last lines were not composed by Wordsworth, but by his wife, Mary. Wordsworth considered
them the best lines of the whole poem. Like most works by Wordsworth, it is romantic in
nature; the beauty of nature, unkempt by humanity, and a reconciliation of man with his
environment, are two of the fundamental principles of the romantic movement within poetry.
The poem is littered with emotionally strong words, such as “golden”, “dancing” and “bliss”.
The plot of the poem is simple. Wordsworth believed it “an elementary feeling and simple
expression”. The speaker is wandering as if among the clouds, viewing a belt of daffodils, next
to a lake whose beauty is overshadowed:
Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The Daffodils grew and still grow on the margin of Ullswater
and probably may be seen to this day as beautiful in the month of March, nodding their
golden heads beside the dancing and foaming waves. —William Wordsworth, 1804

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, 5
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line

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