williams wordsworth i wandered lonely as a cloud

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We got over into a field to avoid some cows-people working, a few primroses by the roadside, woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry yellow flower which Mrs C.

The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the Twigs. We rested again in the Water Millock Lane. There was a Boat by itself floating in the middle of the Bay below Water Millock. The wind seized our breath the Lake was rough. We first rested in the large Boat-house, then under a furze Bush opposite Mr Clarkson's. The wind was furious and we thought we must have returned. Mrs Clarkson went a short way with us but turned back. It was a threatening misty morning-but mild. The entry is from her Grasmere Journals, and is dated April 15, 1802: Here, for instance, is Dorothy's journal entry from the excursion with her brother when they saw daffodils by the lake: Wordsworth is believed to have relied on her diaries when calling up details to write some of his poems. Speaking of Dorothy Wordsworth, she accompanied her brother most everywhere he went, and she was a poet as well as a diligent diarist. But I rather think that those who take the time to read the poem aloud will not think it tame, but will instead take the journey along with Wordsworth from lonely wandering to a happy view of blinding yellow daffodils to an appreciation of the joy the memory must hold. At the time he wrote the poem, he was breaking new ground, although it may seem tame to some now. But the point isn't that he took a walk and saw daffodils it's the emotional journey he took (from loneliness to happiness), and the effect of the memory of the daffodils on his present mood. Wordsworth also looks at psychological aspects of memory here - he relates the actual story of his walk with his sister, Dorothy, and their happenining upon a large swath of daffodils by a lake. Today's poem is one of the best-loved and most well-known in the English language, and that is with good reason: its imagery is lovely, its rhyme and metre make it easy to memorize, and the story it tells (of seeing something beautiful and unexpected in nature and reliving it in memory) is one that resonates with a lot of people. As a result, Wordsworth is widely credited as being one of the first poets in the Romantic era, along with his friend Coleridge, whose poems were included in the 1798 publication Lyrical Ballads, which I referenced in a now-old quoteskimming post. And while references to nature and use of metaphor are common devices in modern poetry, they are used in part because Wordsworth came along and wrote in the way that he did, with a reverence for and appreciation of nature, and with a focus on emotional response to nature and other stimuli. If you go back and read the poem aloud, following the punctuation, you will be able to better hear what Wordsworth is saying. I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, Here's the first stanza written out with pauses only where they naturally occur: That floats on high o'er vales and hills,įorm: Each stanza has 6 lines, is written in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM), and has a rhyme scheme of ABABCC this form, essentially an open form in 'sixain' (six lines to a stanza), was first developed by Shakespeare in 'Venus and Adonis', and was used by Wordsworth in this poem, written in 1804.ĭiscussion: If you read this one aloud, it is easy to fall into a 'pause-at-the-end-of-each-line' mentality, as a means of emphasizing the rhyme scheme, but this is something you SHOULD NOT DO, because you will be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the rhythm and sing-song rhyme effect you achieve, and you will not truly hear the poem. Some of you may know this poem as 'Daffodils', though that's not its actual name its real name is 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud', and it's an extremely popular, much-anthologized poem. No further explanation is needed for today's poem choice - the rest of my post is a reprise from last April. KellyrfinemanOn my way home from this morning's writing session with Angela De Groot ( angeladegroot, who, by the way, just won an award from Writer's Digest for a poem she wrote), I spied daffodils in bloom on a hill.

Williams wordsworth i wandered lonely as a cloud