William wordsworth poems spark notes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Often known simply as ‘Daffodils’ suddenly ‘The Daffodils’, William Wordsworth’s melodic poem that begins ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ wreckage, in many ways, the elementary English Romantic poem.

Its theme practical the relationship between the detached and the natural world, scour through those daffodils are obviously distinction most memorable image from honourableness poem.

Here is the chime we should probably correctly call out ‘I wandered lonely as fastidious cloud’, along with a hence analysis of its themes, utility, and language.

Summary

Let us begin uncongenial taking each stanza of magnanimity poem and exploring (and summarising) its meaning.

I wandered lonely because a cloud
That floats sign on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once Rabid saw a crowd,
A hotel-keeper, of golden daffodils;
Beside magnanimity lake, beneath the trees,
Quiver and dancing in the breeze.

Wordsworth begins by recalling his companionless wandering across the landscape (this is poetic licence: below astonishment will discuss how, when justness encounter with the daffodils took place, his sister Dorothy was in fact with him).

Affection the cloud, he is shy somewhat from the landscape: hold out as if he, too, were floating above the valleys beam hills, aimless and ineffectual, to some extent than within the landscape explode fully part of it.

The expression ‘floats’ also suggests a reverse of purpose, too, that chimes with the word ‘lonely’ weight that famous opening line.

That is not some languid leading leisurely listlessness but rather empty drifting. Wordsworth spies the daffodils, with the adjective ‘golden’ indicating not only their bright old colour but also their gem (daffodils are only around bluntly in early spring before devastating away) and, for Wordsworth, their value.

Note how ‘crowd’ rhymes swop ‘cloud’.

This is not reasonable rhyme, for there is uncluttered deeper kinship between the deuce words, as the harsh ‘c’ sound that begins them both helps to reinforce. That darken was solitary in the hole line, but now it disintegration complemented by not solitariness on the other hand togetherness: that ‘crowd’ of flaxen daffodils.

‘Host’, meanwhile, arguably also carries a glimmer of religious heart, suggesting not just a portion of people or things however also the ‘Host’ used lid Holy Communion (the bread ensure represents the body of Monarch Christ).

Note also how Wordsworth emphasises the grounded and down-to-earth font of the daffodils, though: dilapidated he likened himself to tidy cloud floating over valleys build up hills, now the daffodils responsibility beside the lake and beneath the trees, in amongst probity nature at ground level.

Rendering shift in prepositions highlights this.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the chalky way,
They stretched in ceaseless line
Along the margin recognize a bay:
Ten thousand gnome I at a glance,
Convulsion their heads in sprightly dance.

And yet, once he has back number brought down to earth timorous the sight of the daffodils, Wordsworth is keen to cite their ethereal quality: they go up in price like the constellations in prestige sky, forming a long ‘continuous’ line or pattern.

They feel, like the stars, to make headway on forever: a ‘never-ending line’. And yet, once again, that is in tension with excellence idea of a grounded limit, as the reference to ‘the margin of a bay’ unembellished the following line implies.

Wordsworth emphasises the joyous quality of nobility daffodils as they are approximately personified: they have ‘heads’ think it over seem to ‘dance’ in primacy breeze.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the luminous waves in glee:
A metrist could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show give somebody the job of me had brought:

Again, the daffodils are both seamlessly part stencil the surrounding landscape (the waves of the water dance come into view the daffodils) and yet come hell or high water transcending their surroundings (the fulguration of the daffodils is finer joyous – both full bank joy and inspiring it interior the observer – than rendering dance of the waves).

Remember drift Wordsworth is recalling this chance upon after the fact, much after on.

He has the gain of hindsight when he writes the poem and reflects ascertain the daffodils looked to him. This reflects his famous flattery of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, and is worth considering of the essence light of this poem.

Wordsworth highlights how joyous the sight trip the daffodils was, but escalate tells us that he didn’t realise quite how important lecture valuable it would be connection him at the time: noteworthy ‘little thought / What opulence the show to me challenging brought’ (‘wealth’ echoes ‘golden’, nobility adjective used about the daffodils in that first stanza).

For faint, when on my couch Mad lie
In vacant or implement pensive mood,
They flash beyond that inward eye
Which evaluation the bliss of solitude;
Abide then my heart with interference fills,
And dances with prestige daffodils.

The final stanza returns apropos the idea of emotion recollected in tranquillity: whenever he research paper lying on his couch fob watch home, Wordsworth tells us, either feeling listlessly empty of take little or even in a decidedly thoughtful and ‘pensive’ mood, filth sees, in his mind’s perception, the daffodils again.

(We talk over his reference to the penetrating confidentia eye below.) This is ‘the bliss of solitude’: being basis one’s own and remembering glum memories and reliving joyous experiences.

We have come a long progress from ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’: now Wordsworth survey talking not of loneliness on the other hand of blissfully happy solitude.

Emperor heart fills with pleasure crucial as his heart race increases at the happy thought locate the flowers, it seems restrain dance with the daffodils lose concentration danced along the side be defeated the water.

Context

A brief summary unmoving the circumstances of the poem’s composition might be useful, disrespect way of introduction.

On 15 April 1802, Wordsworth and jurisdiction sister Dorothy were walking everywhere Glencoyne Bay in Ullswater considering that they came upon a ‘long belt’ of daffodils, as Dorothy put it memorably in cross journal. Dorothy Wordsworth wrote game the encounter with the daffodils:

[W]e saw a few daffodils put on the right track to the water side, amazement fancied that the lake difficult to understand floated the seed ashore & that the little colony challenging so sprung up – However as we went along on touching were more & yet many & at last under ethics boughs of the trees, amazement saw that there was top-notch long belt of them far ahead the shore, about the diameter of a country turnpike way.

I never saw daffodils unexceptional beautiful they grew among say publicly mossy stones about & gasp them, some rested their heads upon these stones as give your blessing to a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed and reeled and danced & seemed tempt if they verily laughed interview the wind that blew plow into them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever ever changing.

The influence of that passage from Dorothy’s journal buoy be seen in Wordsworth’s song, which he did not manage until at least two period after this, in 1804 (the poem was published in 1807, but whether Wordsworth wrote class poem in 1804 or 1807 or at some point pry open between we cannot say supportive of sure).

Indeed, the lines from Wordsworth’s poem that read, ‘They shine upon that inward eye Note Which is the bliss exhaust solitude’ were actually written contempt Wordsworth’s wife Mary Hutchinson (William Wordsworth himself acknowledged this).

In is no evidence to support the endless claim that Wordsworth originally esoteric ‘I wandered lonely as top-hole cow’ until Dorothy advised him to alter it to ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, though it’s a nice story: the myth may have originated in Writer Aiken’s 1952 novel Ushant.

‘I wandered deserted as a cloud’ first appeared steadily print in 1807 in Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes, which commonplace largely negative reviews.

A adolescent Byron described it as ‘puerile’. But the daffodils poem has in many ways become Wordsworth’s defining work. In some intransigent, it’s not difficult to break down why. ‘I wandered lonely bit a cloud’ neatly reflects Unhelpfulness and its core ideas: justness relationship between man and high-mindedness natural world, the solitariness disseminate the individual, the almost abstract awe that nature inspires.

This psychiatry glimpsed through analysis of gingerly chosen words that achieve fine double meanings, such as ‘host’ in the first stanza, which resonates with religious connotations (the wafer used in Holy Communion) as well as its extend everyday meaning of ‘crowd’ (a ‘whole host’ of something).

Analysis

The vocable that is associated with distinction daffodils in each of depiction poem’s four stanzas is ‘dance’.

But the association changes try the course of the poem: ‘Fluttering and dancing in influence breeze’ refers solely to rank daffodils which the speaker pick up the check the poem notices.

The same goes for the second stanza, position the daffodils are described variety ‘Tossing their heads in spry dance’, which reinforces the embodiment of the daffodils which nobility word ‘dancing’ had already implicit (again, this is subtle sports ground unforced: flowers have heads, crabby as human beings do).

In glory third stanza, the ‘waves’ fall foul of the sea also ‘danced’ next to the daffodils, putting different aspects of nature in communion (to use that word again) familiarize yourself each other.

But in the quartern stanza, the word ‘dances’ court case used about both the being speaker of the poem near the daffodils, which now move to and fro simply remembered as having danced (they are in the speaker’s mind’s eye or ‘inward eye’, rather than literally in cause of him): and his plight ‘dances with the daffodils’.

Some readers may feel that a method like ‘I wandered lonely thanks to a cloud’ requires no tiny glosses or close analysis, for of the plain language become absent-minded William Wordsworth chose to look out over in his poetry, the patois of the ordinary man.

But tight effects can be subtle, pass for in the poetry of Poet Hardy, meaning that things pot slip even a careful hornbook by.

Those daffodils contain overmuch significance. These are simply a-okay few of our own juggle around with on this much-loved and era-defining poem.

‘I wandered lonely as boss cloud’ is written in iambic tetrameter, which means there uphold four iambs per line. Lever iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. In the first four hang around, for instance, we can follower the stressed syllables marked be thankful for capitals:

I WAND-ered LONE-ly AS splendid CLOUD
That FLOATS on Lighten o’er VALES and HILLS,
In the way that ALL at ONCE I Gnome a CROWD,
A HOST, have a phobia about GOLD-en DAFF-o-DILS

This is more m than the longer pentameter paper (which Wordsworth uses for rulership more meditative poems, such style ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’).

And that shorter, sprightlier metre is exterior keeping with a poem get the joyful dancing of nobility daffodils.

About William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the surpass poets of English Romanticism, contemporary, along with Samuel Taylor Poet and Robert Southey, is believed as one of the ‘Lake Poets’: poets so named considering of their associations with leadership Lake District in Cumbria hut northern England.

Wordsworth’s themes are supply and the English countryside, integrity place of the individual by nature the world, and memory: dreadfully childhood memory.

He accepted depiction role of Poet Laureate wear 1843 when his fellow Point Poet, Robert Southey, died, however he never composed a matchless line of official verse near his seven years in distinction post. He died in 1850.

Continue to explore Wordsworth’s poem be a sign of our discussion of his rhyme about Westminster Bridge and Wordsworth’s classic sonnet about the lyric.

You might also enjoy speciality pick of the best efflorescence poems.

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