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Unit 17: Daffodils by William Wordsworth

not but be gay,/In such a jocund company:/I gazed-and gazed-but little thought/What wealth Notes
the show to me had brought:” (15-18).
It is here that your humble writer can not help but remember one of William Wordsworth’s
earlier poems that he had written six years earlier. William Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in
Early Spring” (1798) serves the reader in much the same way as Wordsworth’s “I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud”, in that his narrator draws inspiration from nature’s beauty to experience
a deep and meaningful emotion within himself as a philosopher and a poet. The great difference,
however, between Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring” and “I Wandered Lonely as
a Cloud” is that in “Lines Written in Early Spring” natures beauty induces in Wordsworth a
deep and powerful mourning for how mankind has perverted his own nature in his then
modern society, whereas “Lines Written in Early Spring” invigorates Wordsworth’s narrator
with the mental imagery of the daffodils.

Most importantly, in both poems Wordsworth describes his narrator as having a moment of
quiet introspection. In much the same way that most readers can relate, Wordsworth’s narrator
in “Lines Written in Early Spring”, upon having a few moments to think to himself, lapses into
a depressed state from his own quiet thoughts: “While in a grove I sate reclined, /In that
sweet mood when pleasant thoughts / Bring sad thoughts to the mind.” (William Wordsworth’s
“Lines Written in Early Spring”, 1798, lines 2-4.). In Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud” his narrator 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).
Wordsworth’s narrator in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is not grieved by “What man has
made of man” (William Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring”, 1798, line 8.) but
contented and near-tickled by his reminiscence of the golden, light-hearted beauty of the
daffodils.
A message can be so drawn from this contrast, whether William Wordsworth intended it or
not, in a Post-Modern dissection and personal interpretation of a theme that holds as much
true to the cannon of Romanticism as to Wordsworth’s own personal philosophy. Perhaps the
popular title for Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “Daffodils”, finds, in itself,
the virtue of the poem and its interpretive meaning. The daffodils are, as well as what
Wordsworth would have intended, natural beauty; the tranquil occurrences of lucky happenstance
that we experience and carry with us in our proverbial hearts as cherished moments and
treasured memories. Likely, many readers skimmed Wordsworth’s description of the daffodils
and quickly spurned it as a “Romantic blubber” of sorts. Needless to say, however, Wordsworth
believes, as does your humble writer, 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. 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.

In William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, the daffodils become 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. Romanticism, a poetic
philosophy that Wordsworth himself engendered, finds much virtue in this meaning; the

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