William Wordsmith's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" or "Daffodils": Analysis
A BESTWORD ANALYSIS
As far as there is to mention, there is little of weight or consequence to speak of in the direct analysis of William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, or “Daffodils” as it is popularly referred to today. From introduction to conclusion, William Wordsworth cleanly describes the act of watching a patch of country daffodils swaying in the breeze and the lasting effect this pleasant image has on his quiet moments of reverie thereafter. But, perhaps in this simple four stanza poem, William Wordsworth has, in writing “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, succeeded in creating one of his greatest works of Romantic poetry by so perfectly
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William Wordsworth’s “lonely cloud” is our own private impersonal perception of the world, floating miles above it and missing the quiet virtues of nature, beauty, and other sources of emotional nourishment.
As William Wordsworth’s narrator is walking, he notices “A host, of golden daffodils;… Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” (4 and 6). Wordsworth goes on to describe these “golden daffodils” as a vast plot of swaying flowers around the fringes of a bay, outdoing the beauty of the ocean’s waves with their own golden oscillation. Describing the daffodils for the next several lines, Wordsworth helps us to visualize what he himself has seen and was so moved by; “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. / The waves beside them danced; but they / Out-did the sparkling waves in glee” (12-14). These light-hearted daffodils, weaving in unison with each other in the wind, have romantically touched Wordsworth, their natural beauty reaching him in ways that he describes as not fully understanding until later: “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:” (15-18).
It is here that your humble writer can not help but remember one of William Wordsworth’s
In “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” William Wordsworth writes of a lonely day while out for a walk; until he stumbles across a bed of beautiful golden daffodils dancing in the breeze.
“Mother to Son” develops a sense of happiness and determination. As Hughes explains that the mother endures trials and tribulations throughout the poem, we find that she continues to persevere, setting a wonderful example for her son. In contrast, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” uses a tone which is somewhat different to “Mother to Son.” Wordsworth takes a different approach in showing an individual’s feelings. Wordsworth’s character feels lonely and depressed. Suddenly, the tone changes to a more joyful and appreciative tone when he stumbles upon a field of daffodils. Clearly, the tones of each poem differ and resemble each other at the same
The poet orders his listener to behold a “solitary Highland lass” reaping and singing by herself in a field. He says that anyone passing by should either stop here, or “gently pass” so as not to disturb her. As she “cuts and binds the grain” she “sings a melancholy strain,” and the valley overflows with the beautiful, sad sound. The speaker says that the sound is more welcome than any chant of the nightingale to weary travelers in the desert, and that the cuckoo-bird in spring never sang with a voice so thrilling. Impatient, the poet asks, “Will no one tell me what she sings?” He speculates that her song might be about “old, unhappy, far-off things, / And battles long ago,” or that it might be humbler, a simple song about “matter of today.” Whatever she sings about, he says, he listened “motionless and still,” and as he traveled up the
In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.
John Muir and William Wordsworth are great examples of this theory. Throughout their stories, both men give great insight to how the harmony of nature impacts their lives in a way that can make them forget about all the sorrow and depression they have following behind them; Wordsworth and Muir’s stories include syntax and diction to verbalize their passionate relationship towards nature. William Wordsworth’s poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” excellently shows how the power of beauty can changes one's once depressed, sad day into joy and blissfulness. In Wordsworth's story, he exploits his experience of how nature changed his mood of depression and sorrow to grateful and glee when he stumbles across a bed of beautiful golden daffodils dancing in the breeze. Wordsworth writes: “A poet could not be but gay, in such a jocund company” (stanza 3). In this passage, Wordsworth shows his change of heart when in the presence of something so beautiful and alluring. Wordsworth also shows how nature impacts his mood from the quote: “They flash upon the inward eye, and my heart with pleasure fills” (stanza 4). In this final quote, Wordsworth explains that even when he is apart from the beautiful golden daffodils, it is the memory that keeps his spirits alive. While Wordsworth's experience with nature
Wordsworth demonstrates his use of tone and syntax in the following stanza, “Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.” The tone of the stanza is joyful because he is happy when he talks about how beautiful the daffodils are. This shows how his relationship with nature is positive since he is happy when watching the daffodils. Wordsworth uses traditional syntax in this stanza. He uses several phrases divided by commas to describe the daffodils and their movements. This gives the stanza a playful pace which again expresses that his relationship with nature is happy and
Two literary works best conveyed nature in their own manner, one called "The Calypso Borealis," an essay written by John Miller called and a poem written by William Wordsworth's called "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Both author created work that captures the beauty of nature, while displaying their compassion and emotion for such beauty. They each capture the essence in their own way, one through a poem while the other through an essay , each using a their own descriptive imagery to cultivate the scenery and amazement of the experience. William Wordsworth and John Miller not only through the diction , vocabulary, and syntax, but also through the impact of tone, and mood, and while both authors express their relationship in different ways there
Although everyone is their own individual, society determines who is considered “normal.” In Flowers for Algernon, Charlie Gordon struggles to fit in with the people around him because of his mental illness. Elie Wiesel faces the same struggles while trying to survive in a concentration camp in Night. Charlie and Elie have both been challenged by the concept of identity. In Flowers for Algernon and Night, these characters have faced many conflicts including not having their identity accepted by society, having insecurities about their identity, and being mistreated based on their identity.
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, a poem that discloses the relationship between nature and human beings: how nature can affect one’s emotion and behavior with its motion and sound. The words the author adopted in this poem are interconnected and related to each other. They are simple yet profound, letting us understand how much William Wordsworth related his works to nature and the universe. It also explained to us why William Wordsworth is one of the greatest and the most influential English romantic poets in history. As Robert DiYanni says in his book, “with much of Wordsworth’s poetry, this lyric reflects his deep love of nature, his vision of a unified
Wordsworth says that, wandering like a cloud floating above the hill and valleys, he encountered a field of daffodils beside a lake, in the poem. “I wandered lonely as a cloud” A poet could not help but to be happy in such a joyful company of flowers. William stared and watched but did not realize what wealth the scene would bring him. Whenever he feels “vacant” or “pensive” the picture would flash upon “that inward eye / That is the bliss of solitude. : and his heart fills with pleasure, “and dances with the daffodils.” (Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud). Wordsworth also created songs of innocence such as “Daffodils Song”. The Romantic poets, predominantly Wordsworth and Blake were spellbound by the natural world. The author used pastoral landscapes to evoke joy, to create peaceful scenes that were only darkened by the threat of urbanization and the Industrial Revolution. (William Wordsworth: Artistic Reaction to the Industrial Revolution, Fed 14, 2000)
Throughout “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” William Wordsworth shows his relationship with nature through his choice of diction, fantastic descriptions, and shifting mood of his poem. There are also many words and phrases that Wordsworth included into his poem that shows how he feels about nature. These phrases are well written, extremely descriptive, and show how Wordsworth is influenced by the wild: “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, “When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils", “Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched 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”, “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought”, and “For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye [...] and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.” Another phrase, which indicates that the flowers were so beautiful that no true poet could be sad in their presence, also builds upon Wordsworth’s relationship with nature. These particular lines in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” show how Wordsworth’s mood shifts from somber and lonely to joyous and content. The lines also show how the gorgeousness of nature sticks with
By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that
In "Daffodils", we again see all the features that make this poem fit into the tradition of Romanticism and Romantic Poetry. Wordsworth describes nature and says how beautiful it is and the beauty he sees when he looks at the daffodils. "when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils".
Robert Frost said many times throughout his life that all men share a common bond. In his poem “The Tuft of Flowers” he analyzes the potential of such a bond, in first person. Frost turns an everyday common job, into discovering a common bond with another laborer. The author uses a comparison between aloneness with a sense of understanding to demonstrate his theme of unity between two men. In another one of Frost’s poems “Birches” he imagines walking through the woods looking at all the trees, and seeing the top bending towards the ground. When he sees this he imagines they are bending from kids swinging on them, rather then what is really happening to them. It can be analyzed that Frost had a very definitive appreciation for nature, and a very broad imagination.
Personifying another facet of nature, Wordsworth partners the daffodils in their dance, "The waves beside them danced, but they / Outdid the sparkling waves in glee" (13-14). The lines also work to strengthen