The poem
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Written in 1804; published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). Commonly known as 'Daffodils'.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
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:
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:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
About the author
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads (1798). He believed poetry should use 'the real language of men' and find deep feeling in ordinary sights. 'Daffodils' recalls a walk with his sister Dorothy in the Lake District in 1802; her journal describes the same flowers. He became Poet Laureate in 1843.
Themes
Memory as wealth. The poem's real subject is not the daffodils but what happens later: lying on his couch in a 'pensive mood', the poet replays the scene on his 'inward eye' and is filled with pleasure. Nature gives the experience; memory, 'the bliss of solitude', turns it into lasting joy.
Reading note
The poem is Wordsworth's own theory in action: 'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' recollected in tranquility. Stanzas one to three are the overflow (the walk, the dancing flowers); stanza four is the recollection, years later, on the couch. The turn from outward sight to inward vision is the whole point.