Daffodils /William Wordsworth

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also commonly known as "Daffodils" or "The Daffodils") is a poem by William Wordsworth. It was inspired by an April 15, 1802 event in which Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, came across a "long belt" of daffodils. Written in 1804, it was first published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, and a revised version was released in 1815, which is more commonly known. It consists of four six-line stanzas, in iambic tetrameter and an ABABCC rhyme scheme. It is usually considered Wordsworth's most famous work. In the "Nation's Favourite Poems", a poll carried out by the BBC's Bookworm, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" came fifth. Well known, and often anthologised, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is commonly seen as a classic of English romanticism within poetry, although the original version was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries.

"Daffodils" (1804)

I WANDER'D 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.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

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:

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.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Relationship and love/ William Wordsworth

 William Wordsworth considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and the most interesting properties of nature. 'The fairest and most interesting properties of nature' are not the most beautiful and most picturesque aspects of natural scenery, but those aspects of the physical world which when they react on the sensitive mind of the poet, produces an awareness of some of the basic laws of the human mind. Wordsworth writes-

"The poet is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love."

As for the poet being 'rock of defence for human nature', this world seems to mean that the poet in virtue of his achievement of this kind of awareness, redeems man from triviality and from selfishness by demonstrating the importance of sympathy and the relation of the individual experiences to the sum of life. Wordsworth further expands-

"The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society."

He does this by revealing hte common psychological laws which underlie all sensation and all sensitivity and revealing it not by abstract discussion but by showing through the persuasive concrete illustration. The poet thus reveals the relationship of men both to each other and to the external world.

For Wordsworth, it is neither the edifying nature of the poet's world, nor the accuracy of his psychological observations, nor the smoothness and agreeableness of his versification which gives him pleasure; it is his ability to body forth in concrete and sensuous terms those basic principles illustrated alike in the mind of man and the workings of nature.

Wordsworth removes the instruction from the 'instruction and delight' formula of many 17th and 18th century critics, but saves himself from falling into a simple hedonistic theory by insisting on the moral dignity of pleasure and its universal significance in man in nature. He resolves the Platonic dilemma in a quiet new way. Poetry is not an imitation of an imitation, but a concrete and sensuous illustration of both a fact and a relationship which provides pleasure and at the same time shows the universal importance of pleasure. It does not debase men by nourishing their passions, for passions are but a means of knowledge. Passion, sensation and pleasure are, under the proper conditions, good and helpful things. conductive to knowledge and to love. It is an answer curiously Platonic in tone, though so un-Platonic in its assumptions.

Revival of Shakespeare in Romantic Era.

It was Madame de Stael who first coined the word "romanticism" in her book on Germany (1813). Her definition occurred in the section on poetry in which she contrasted classical and romantic poetry. She found the basic difference in the artificiality of the classical and naturalness of the romantic poetry. The greatness of the Romantics came from elevating character over action. Placing character in the foreground, they centered their attention upon honour, love and bravery- inshort, upon the internal condition of individuals rather than upon those external forces the ancients thought guided human destiny. This meant the primacy of 'emotion' and 'sentiment', since the human character must be detached from the environment and analyzed in terms of the individual's own emotions.




Madame de Stael's praise for the moderns and hostility toward the ancients epitomized a feeling quite prevalent at the beginning of the century. This was explicit in the plays of the time which tended to become mere vehicles for violent emotions displayed on stage. Oratory and emotion were prized far above well-cnstructed action.. Not the construction of Shakespeare's plays but the ideal of character portrayal which contemporaries saw in him, led to a renewed international popularity of his works. When Shakespeare was first revealed to France in 1827 by kemble and his troupe of actors, the audience was struck by the 'sentiment' and 'emotion' which they contrasted favorably with the great French classical writers like Racine and Corneille. Similarly, the romantic enthusiasm for Shakespeare was so great in Germany that by the end of the century one writer wrote a whole book entitled 'Shakesperomania' (1873) in order to save German literature from such contaminating English influence.


Romantics saw in Shakespeare an anticipation of the modern in the arts. He seemed to have put into practice the conceetnration upon the internal condition of man which Madame de Stael had praised. This 'inner man' seemed to be sumsumed under a series of words which the Romantics used constantly: character,emotion, sentiment and soul. Romantics used them to oppose rational systematizing: "He who believes in systems expells love from his heart." Yet, when the consequences which flowed from its view of life are analyzed, it is apparent that romanticism tended to become a system itself.


Excerpts taken from 'The Culture of Western Europe' by George Lachmann Mosse