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).

Man and Nature in 'The Prelude' /William Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

'The Prelude' is important in giving one of the most succinct of Wordsworth's accounts of the development of his attitude to Nature - moving from the animal pleasure of childhood through adolescent passion for the wild and gloomy to adult awareness of the relation of our perception of the natural world; but its poetic interest lies in its brilliant combination of the lyric and the meditative, the exaltation of reminiscence into poetry through the proper handling of 'Relationship and Love'.

Nature in Wordsworth's poetry is not regarded as a background for his pictures of men, nor as a mere mirror refecting the feelings of man, but rather as a wonderful power around us calming and influencing our souls. An essentially Wordsworthian feature of his treatment of Nature is his intense spirituality revealed in these lines of 'Tintern Abbey'-

'She can so inform the mind that is within us, so impress, with quietness and beauty, and so feed with lofty thoughts...'

Similar idea is beautifully and effectively expressed in these lines of Book I of 'The Prelude'-

'The immortal spirit grows
like harmony in music.
There is a dark invisible workmanship
that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
in one society.'

According to Wordsworth, the best in man comes out during his companionship with Nature. Infact, Nature has the power to draw out from within us those hidden powers that go to build what we essentially are! Wordsworth's strong conviction that 'the child is the father of man' is an extension of his feelings for Nature. He felt that he owed what he was in maturity to his childhood, spent in the free natural surroundings of hills, groves and streams. Thus, Wordsworth had developed from passive admiration of Nature to the possession of an active creative power induced by Nature.


Wordsworth insists that through contact with Nature, the heart is exalted and made happy. Such happiness and exaltation is moral and in such a moral condition the heart can do no wrong. 'Wordsworthian Nature and Worsworthian Man appear akin.'

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.