"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also commonly known as "Daffodils"^[1] 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.^[2] It consists of four six-line stanzas, in iambic tetrameter and an ABABCC rhyme scheme.

It is usually considered Wordsworth's most famous work.^[3] In the "Nation's Favourite Poems", a poll carried out by the BBC's Bookworm,^[4] "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" came fifth.^[5] 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.

Contents 1 Background 2 Composition and themes

Background

The inspiration for the poem came from a walk he took with his sister Dorothy around Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater, in the Lake District.^[6][7] Wordsworth would draw on this to compose "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" in 1804. It was inspired by Dorothy's writing in reference to this walk:^[7]

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seed ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road.

I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever dancing ever changing.

This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The Bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances and in the middle of the water like the sea.

– Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal , Thursday, 15 April 1802

The death of his brother, John, in 1805 had affected William strongly.^[8] However, the effect of his sister Dorothy was positive, and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is considered an example of the benefit of her presence. In this respect, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is like "Alice Fell", "The Beggars" and "The Butterfly".^[9] At the time of the poem, Wordsworth lived with his wife and sister at Dove Cottage, in Grasmere in England's Lake District.^[6]

Lyrical Ballads, a series of poems by both himself and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had been first published in 1798 and had started the romantic movement in England. It had brought Wordsworth and the other Lake poets into the poetic limelight. Wordsworth had published nothing new since the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads, and a new publication was eagerly awaited.^[10] Wordsworth had, however, gained some financial security by the 1805 publication of the fourth edition of Lyrical Ballads; it was the first from which he enjoyed the profits of copyright ownership. He decided to turn away from "The Recluse" and turn more attention to the expedient publication of Poems in Two Volumes, in which "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" would appear.^[11]

Composition and themes

The poem is a sonnet , 24 lines long, consisting of four six-line stanzas. Each stanza is formed by a quatrain, then a couplet, to form a sestet and a ABABCC rhyme scheme.^[1] The fourth- and third-last lines were not composed by Wordsworth, but by his wife, Mary. Wordsworth considered them the best lines of the whole poem.^[1][12] Like most works by Wordsworth, it is romantic in nature;^[13] the beauty of nature, unkempt by humanity, and a reconciliation of man with his environment, are two of the fundamental principles of the romantic movement within poetry. The poem is littered with emotionally strong words, such as "golden", "dancing" and "bliss".

The plot of the poem is simple. Wordsworth believed it "an elementary feeling and simple expression".^[14] The speaker is wandering as if among the clouds, viewing a belt of daffodils, next to a lake whose beauty is overshadowed:^[15]

The reversal of usual syntax in phrases, particularly "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" is used as part of foregrounding (for emphasis).^[16] Loneliness, it seems, is only a human emotion, unlike the mere solitariness of the cloud.^[17] In the second and third verses, the memory of the daffodils is given permanence (particularly through comparison the stars); this is in contrast to the transitory nature of life examined in other works:^[18]

In the last stanza, it is revealed that this scene is only a memory of the pensive speaker.^[12] This is marked by a change from a narrative past tense to the present tense. as a conclusion to a sense of movement within the poem: passive to active motion; from sadness to blissfulness.^[16] The scene of the last verse mirrors the readers' situation as they take in the poem:^[19]

Like the maiden's song in "The Solitary Reaper," the memory of the daffodils is etched in the speaker's mind and soul to be cherished forever. When he's feeling lonely, dull or depressed, he thinks of the daffodils and cheers up. The full impact of the daffodils' beauty (symbolizing the beauty of nature) did not strike him at the moment of seeing them, when he stared blankly at them but much later when he sat alone, sad and lonely and remembered them.^[17]

Personification is used within the poem, particularly with regards to the flowers themselves, and the whole passage consists of images appearing within the mind of the poet.