I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Summary

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, often called Daffodils, is a short lyric that Wordsworth wrote in 1804 and published in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, in the group titled Moods of My Own Mind. The text here is the 1807 first edition in three six-line stanzas; in 1815 Wordsworth added a fourth stanza, now the second, beginning Continuous as the stars that shine. The poem grew from a walk that William and his sister Dorothy took beside Ullswater on 15 April 1802, which Dorothy described in her journal, noting daffodils that tossed and reeled and danced along the shore. In the poem the speaker is wandering alone, like a cloud floating high over valleys and hills, when all at once he sees a crowd, a host of golden daffodils beside the lake and beneath the trees, ten thousand dancing in the breeze. The waves of the lake dance beside them, but the flowers outdo the sparkling waves in glee, and the poet cannot help being happy in such a laughing company. He gazes and gazes but does not realise at the time what wealth the sight has given him. The last stanza explains the gift. Often, lying on his couch in vacant or pensive mood, he sees the daffodils again with that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude, and his heart fills with pleasure and dances with them. Wordsworth later said that his wife Mary contributed the two lines about the inward eye. The poem thus illustrates his famous definition of poetry as emotion recollected in tranquillity: the experience matters most when it is remembered. Its simplicity was mocked by early reviewers, but it has become perhaps the best-known poem in English, learned by generations of schoolchildren.

Top Lessons

• Wealth that lasts

  The poet did not know what wealth the sight had brought until later. True riches may be memories of beauty.

• Solitude and company

  He begins lonely as a cloud but finds a laughing company; later solitude becomes bliss.

• Personification

  The flowers dance, toss their heads and laugh.

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