Page 165 - DENG103_English - I

English–I

Notes daffodils reaching out and catching the eye of Wordsworth’s narrator, or perhaps Wordsworth
himself, and inspiring him so much emotionally, that he was left with little choice than to
express them poetically.
Wordsworth’s narrator of “Lines Written in Early Spring” struggles with his own innate human
predisposition towards melancholy in a world where contemporary human society and civilization
has destroyed our connection to nature, and incidentally our own nature as well, but Wordsworth’s
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).
William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” or “Daffodils” is a deep and moving
work of poetry that under a deceivingly simple exterior could possibly be, under energetic
dissection, argued as one of Wordsworth’s greatest works of Romanticism. By staying true to
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, Wordsworth, in four
simple stanzas if imagery, could, perhaps, not better described in verse the Romantic ideology.
The popular title for Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “Daffodils”, has in a
single word summed an entire literary philosophy.

17.2 Critical Appreciation of ‘Daffodils’

The poem ‘Daffodils’ is also known by the title ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, a lyrical poem
written by William Wordsworth in 1804. It was published in 1815 in ‘Collected Poems’ with
four stanzas. William Wordsworth is a well-known romantic poet who believed in conveying
simple and creative expressions through his poems. He had quoted, “Poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”.

Notes Daffodils is one of the most popular poems of the Romantic Age, unfolding the
poet’s excitement, love and praise for a field blossoming with daffodils.

17.3 Rhyming Scheme of Daffodils

The ‘Daffodils’ has a rhyming scheme throughout the poem. The rhyming scheme of the above
stanza is ABAB ( A - cloud and crowd; B - hills and daffodils) and ending with a rhyming
couplet CC (C - trees and breeze). The above stanza makes use of ‘Enjambment’ which converts
the poem into a continuous flow of expressions without a pause.

17.4 Figures of Speech Used in Daffodils

I wander’d lonely as a cloud - The first line makes nice use of personification and simile. The
poet assumes himself to be a cloud (simile) floating in the sky. When Wordsworth says in the
second line ‘I’ (poet as a cloud) look down at the valleys and mountains and appreciate the
daffodils; it’s the personification, where an inanimate object (cloud) possesses the quality of
a human enabling it to see the daffodils. The line “Ten thousand saw I at a glance” is an
exaggeration and a hyperbole, describing the scene of ten thousand daffodils, all together.
Alliteration is the repetition of similar sounds, is applied for the word ‘h’, in the words-high
and hills.

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