Professional Documents
Culture Documents
William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was born in 1770, the 7th of April, in England and died
at the age of 80. He was a Romantic poet, who wrote important papers, such as
Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion, The Prelude(a
semiautobiographical poem), I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and many more.
The one I am about to approach is I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud or
Daffodils, known as a lyrical poem, one of William Wordsworth famous work.
The poem was written between 1804-1807 and was published for the first
time in 1807 in Poems in two Volumes and as a revised version, in 1815.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud was actually inspired by a real event. In
volume 3 of The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, we actually have a
piece of his sisters diary, Dorothy: When we were in the woods beyond
Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that
the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up.
But as we went along there were more, and yet 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 above 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 glancing,
ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and
there a little knot, and a few stragglers higher up; but they were so few as not to
disturb the simplicity, 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...."
The plot of the poem is quite simple: we have the description of a field
filled with daffodils, the personification of the beautiful flowers, compared to the
stars, the gold, and although the poet will leave the actual place that seemed to
be like Heaven for him, in his heart he will always have the picture of the
daffodils, but not only the picture, but he will actually dance with the daffodils.
In the first four lines, the poet actually is trying to put us in the
atmosphere of the poem, saying that he was wandering lonely as a cloud, a
comparison, but a metaphor also, in my opinion. He is very surprised that he saw
a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils. Of course, the annexation of the two
terms is unique, because we never have thought that we could say that daffodils
stay in crowds. Anyway, we understand that there were a lot of daffodils grown in
one place. Of course, in the 5th and 6th line, the daffodils are thought to be
creatures, because the author assigns them qualities of humans: dancing in the
breeze.
Note: the topic of the essay was to discuss the theme of nature/tourism with the Romantics
through one poem of your choice. You may refer to Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats.