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William Wordworth's ＂I wandered lonely as a cloud＂
Summary and Analysis
Stanza 1
In the first stanza, the poet says that he was wandering lonely as a Cloud that floats on high o’er vales and Hills. The phrase refers to him being roaming around without any purpose. He was all alone like a cloud that floats high in the valley.
Usually, the clouds are not alone, but here the poet probably refers to a fragment of the cloud that moves among the hills in the valley. Unlike the clouds that are full of rain and thus move in purpose, this fragment has no particular direction to move and just roams around above the valley.
While roaming in the valley he suddenly sees a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils. The words crowd and host mean a large number of people. Hence the poet uses personification and attributes the human qualities to daffodils.
The poet calls daffodils golden rather than yellow in order to express their majesty and beauty. According to the poet, he sees a large number of daffodils beside the lake, beneath the trees i.e. along with the shores of the lake and below the trees because they are small.
The daffodils seem to be fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Again the poet personifies the daffodils by showing them as flapping (wings of birds or in imaginations that of angels) and dancing (like humans) in the moving breeze.
In a way, the poet imagines as if the daffodils possess the qualities of both thus of the world and the meta world. Hence this is the example of juxtaposition in I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.
Stanza 2
The second stanza begins with the comparison between daffodils along the lake and stars in the Milkyway. The poet says that the daffodils stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay. The bay here refers to the lake.
According to the poet, the daffodils which covered the shore of the lake seemed to be unending like the stars in the sky and like them (the stars of Milkyway), they were too twinkling.
The phrase Ten thousand saw I at a glance is a hyperbole that means the poet saw a large number of daffodils which he could not count. The daffodils were Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The word head here refers to the top flower part of the plant.
Sprightly dance means lively and jubilant dance. The daffodils were thus moving their heads (flowers) in a rhythm which looked quite amazing and seemed to the poet as they were dancing.
Stanza 3
In the third stanza, the poet brings in the waves waving in the lake. The poet says that the waves beside them danced; but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee.
The lin means that there were waves too which seemed to be dancing in the lake, but the joyful dance of the daffodils was far better than theirs. And for a poet like Wordsworth himself, their joyful company was the ultimate source of pleasure and ecstasy.
These lines somehow reflect the ideals of the Romantic Age and its theme return to nature. The ultimate source of joy for the Romantics was nature and its appreciation.
Hence in the poem, the poet concludes that seeing the daffodils dancing along the lake is the dream of every poet including him and being there is like dream coming true.
And thus the poet gazed—and gazed i.e. kept looking on the daffodils and their dance. However, he could not fully appreciate the scenery before him. Wealth here means ‘happiness‘.
For the Romantics, nature and its beauty was the ultimate wealth and because it was in abundance, he could take away just a little bit of it though he kept watching them.
Stanza 4
In the fourth and final stanza, the poet says that while sitting on his couch (a kind of bench) and in vacant (when he is idle) or in pensive mood (when he is sorrowful), the memories of those daffodils flash upon his inward eye i.e. his spiritual or the Romantic vision.
Their memory then becomes the source of joy in his solitude. His heart is then filled with pleasure and dances with the daffodils. Thus the memory of the daffodils becomes his companion in his solitude and taking away all his sorrows and boredom make his spirit dance with them.
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