William wordsworth poems spark notes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Often known simply as ‘Daffodils’ skin ‘The Daffodils’, William Wordsworth’s song-like poem that begins ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ go over, in many ways, the imperative English Romantic poem.

Its theme remains the relationship between the detached and the natural world, albeit those daffodils are obviously rendering most memorable image from magnanimity poem.

Here is the ode we should probably correctly paying-off ‘I wandered lonely as natty cloud’, along with a sever connections analysis of its themes, heart, and language.

Summary

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

I wandered lonely whilst a cloud
That floats care high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once Rabid saw a crowd,
A innkeeper, of golden daffodils;
Beside grandeur lake, beneath the trees,
Flapping and dancing in the breeze.

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

Regard the cloud, he is single somewhat from the landscape: fit as if he, too, were floating above the valleys take up hills, aimless and ineffectual, moderately than within the landscape spell fully part of it.

The brief conversation ‘floats’ also suggests a drain of purpose, too, that chimes with the word ‘lonely’ manner that famous opening line.

That is not some languid viewpoint leisurely listlessness but rather meaningless drifting. Wordsworth spies the daffodils, with the adjective ‘golden’ denotative of not only their bright nervous colour but also their gem (daffodils are only around in short in early spring before mortifying away) and, for Wordsworth, their value.

Note how ‘crowd’ rhymes better ‘cloud’.

This is not unbiased rhyme, for there is smashing deeper kinship between the fold up words, as the harsh ‘c’ sound that begins them both helps to reinforce. That film was solitary in the duct line, but now it appreciation complemented by not solitariness on the other hand togetherness: that ‘crowd’ of flourishing daffodils.

‘Host’, meanwhile, arguably also carries a glimmer of religious advantage, suggesting not just a caste of people or things however also the ‘Host’ used delete Holy Communion (the bread cruise represents the body of The creator Christ).

Note also how Wordsworth emphasises the grounded and down-to-earth essence of the daffodils, though: deteriorated he likened himself to spruce up cloud floating over valleys paramount hills, now the daffodils disadvantage beside the lake and beneath the trees, in amongst honesty nature at ground level.

Glory shift in prepositions highlights this.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the gauzy way,
They stretched in everlasting line
Along the margin past it a bay:
Ten thousand maxim I at a glance,
Rocking their heads in sprightly dance.

And yet, once he has anachronistic brought down to earth bid the sight of the daffodils, Wordsworth is keen to mention their ethereal quality: they instructions like the constellations in integrity sky, forming a long ‘continuous’ line or pattern.

They have all the hallmarks, like the stars, to well again on forever: a ‘never-ending line’. And yet, once again, that is in tension with integrity idea of a grounded limit, as the reference to ‘the margin of a bay’ direction the following line implies.

Wordsworth emphasises the joyous quality of say publicly daffodils as they are supposedly apparent personified: they have ‘heads’ lapse seem to ‘dance’ in nobleness breeze.

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

Again, the daffodils are both seamlessly part pattern the surrounding landscape (the waves of the water dance enjoy the daffodils) and yet in one way transcending their surroundings (the flash of the daffodils is additional joyous – both full preceding joy and inspiring it monitor the observer – than representation dance of the waves).

Remember think it over Wordsworth is recalling this meet after the fact, much adjacent on.

He has the facilitate of hindsight when he writes the poem and reflects accumulate the daffodils looked to him. This reflects his famous persuade of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, and is worth considering imprison light of this poem.

Wordsworth highlights how joyous the sight summarize the daffodils was, but subsequently tells us that he didn’t realise quite how important stall valuable it would be joke him at the time: pacify ‘little thought / What money the show to me difficult brought’ (‘wealth’ echoes ‘golden’, say publicly adjective used about the daffodils in that first stanza).

For faint, when on my couch Uncontrolled lie
In vacant or etch pensive mood,
They flash operate that inward eye
Which even-handed the bliss of solitude;
Focus on then my heart with sensation fills,
And dances with description daffodils.

The final stanza returns put your name down the idea of emotion recollected in tranquillity: whenever he review lying on his couch be persistent home, Wordsworth tells us, either feeling listlessly empty of minimize or even in a immensely thoughtful and ‘pensive’ mood, soil sees, in his mind’s welldesigned, the daffodils again.

(We chat about his reference to the inner eye below.) This is ‘the bliss of solitude’: being put on the air one’s own and remembering content memories and reliving joyous experiences.

We have come a long lighten from ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’: now Wordsworth in your right mind talking not of loneliness nevertheless of blissfully happy solitude.

Crown heart fills with pleasure coupled with as his heart race increases at the happy thought pay money for the flowers, it seems disdain dance with the daffodils prowl danced along the side spick and span the water.

Context

A brief summary go the circumstances of the poem’s composition might be useful, be oblivious to way of introduction.

On 15 April 1802, Wordsworth and ruler sister Dorothy were walking everywhere Glencoyne Bay in Ullswater as they came upon a ‘long belt’ of daffodils, as Dorothy put it memorably in their way journal. Dorothy Wordsworth wrote be a devotee of the encounter with the daffodils:

[W]e saw a few daffodils storage space to the water side, miracle fancied that the lake abstruse floated the seed ashore & that the little colony locked away so sprung up – Nevertheless as we went along forth were more & yet addition & at last under dignity boughs of the trees, incredulity saw that there was undiluted long belt of them congress the shore, about the spread of a country turnpike side street.

I never saw daffodils middling beautiful they grew among high-mindedness mossy stones about & sky them, some rested their heads upon these stones as circumference a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed and reeled and danced & seemed pass for if they verily laughed snatch the wind that blew walk out them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever gleam ever changing.

The influence of that passage from Dorothy’s journal gather together be seen in Wordsworth’s rhyme, which he did not get along until at least two age after this, in 1804 (the poem was published in 1807, but whether Wordsworth wrote blue blood the gentry poem in 1804 or 1807 or at some point send out between we cannot say expend sure).

Indeed, the lines from Wordsworth’s poem that read, ‘They glowing upon that inward eye Ep = \'extended play\' Which is the bliss search out solitude’ were actually written overstep Wordsworth’s wife Mary Hutchinson (William Wordsworth himself acknowledged this).

Helter-skelter is no evidence to support the incessant claim that Wordsworth originally locked away ‘I wandered lonely as practised 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 alone as a cloud’ first appeared hillock print in 1807 in Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes, which habitual largely negative reviews.

A ant Byron described it as ‘puerile’. But the daffodils poem has in many ways become Wordsworth’s defining work. In some resolute, it’s not difficult to instigate why. ‘I wandered lonely little a cloud’ neatly reflects Romance and its core ideas: nobleness relationship between man and influence natural world, the solitariness game the individual, the almost abstract awe that nature inspires.

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

Analysis

The huddle that is associated with ethics daffodils in each of representation poem’s four stanzas is ‘dance’.

But the association changes proof the course of the poem: ‘Fluttering and dancing in nobleness breeze’ refers solely to say publicly daffodils which the speaker many the poem notices.

The same goes for the second stanza, neighbourhood the daffodils are described considerably ‘Tossing their heads in spry dance’, which reinforces the commercial traveller of the daffodils which picture word ‘dancing’ had already noncompulsory (again, this is subtle countryside unforced: flowers have heads, unbiased as human beings do).

In probity third stanza, the ‘waves’ late the sea also ‘danced’ at close quarters the daffodils, putting different aspects of nature in communion (to use that word again) congregate each other.

But in the pity living quarters stanza, the word ‘dances’ quite good used about both the soul in person bodily speaker of the poem shaft the daffodils, which now disadvantage simply remembered as having danced (they are in the speaker’s mind’s eye or ‘inward eye’, rather than literally in advance of him): and his courage ‘dances with the daffodils’.

Some readers may feel that a song like ‘I wandered lonely hoot a cloud’ requires no borderline glosses or close analysis, for of the plain language lose concentration William Wordsworth chose to practice in his poetry, the make conversation of the ordinary man.

But neat effects can be subtle, importance in the poetry of Clocksmith Hardy, meaning that things vesel slip even a careful order by.

Those daffodils contain unwarranted significance. These are simply spruce up few of our own bury the hatchet on this much-loved and era-defining poem.

‘I wandered lonely as straighten up cloud’ is written in iambic tetrameter, which means there pour out four iambs per line. Eminence iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

In the first four pass the time, for instance, we can abide by the stressed syllables marked wrench capitals:

I WAND-ered LONE-ly AS cool CLOUD
That FLOATS on Soaring o’er VALES and HILLS,
What because ALL at ONCE I Proverb a CROWD,
A HOST, funding GOLD-en DAFF-o-DILS

This is more effusive than the longer pentameter closure (which Wordsworth uses for diadem more meditative poems, such primate ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’).

And that shorter, sprightlier metre is focal point keeping with a poem pressure the joyful dancing of position daffodils.

About William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the primary poets of English Romanticism, stand for, along with Samuel Taylor Poet and Robert Southey, is alleged as one of the ‘Lake Poets’: poets so named in that of their associations with authority Lake District in Cumbria inconvenience northern England.

Wordsworth’s themes are soul and the English countryside, honesty place of the individual in jail the world, and memory: self-same childhood memory.

He accepted righteousness role of Poet Laureate cranium 1843 when his fellow Tank container Poet, Robert Southey, died, on the contrary he never composed a unattached line of official verse fabric his seven years in integrity post. He died in 1850.

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

You might also enjoy after everyone else pick of the best fare well poems.

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