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William WordsworthA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The speaker in “Daffodils” recalls feeling mentally isolated, a fact made clear by the poem’s first line and original title, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” However, the speaker’s encounter with the field of flowers reminds them that there is beauty in the natural world, and they are a part of it, despite their occasional thoughts of separation and/or despondency. This, in turn, causes moments of joy for the speaker when the daffodils are recollected in the future.
As the poem begins in the past tense, the speaker remembers themselves as “lonely as a cloud” (Line 1). They perceive their status at the time as aimless and disconnected, as they “wandered” (Line 1) and “float[ed]” (Line 2) above the world. There is a level of disengagement or superiority with the world below. However, after they perused the “vales and hills” (Line 2), which may perhaps symbolize the highs and lows of life, the speaker discovered a happy surprise—a patch of flowers that filled them with awe.
“Beside the lake, beneath the trees” (Line 5), they spied some “golden daffodils” (Line 4). While the speaker recalls the bright color of the flowers, they also remember being drawn to the fact that they were not solitary.
By William Wordsworth
A Complaint
William Wordsworth
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
William Wordsworth
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ...
William Wordsworth
London, 1802
William Wordsworth
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up
William Wordsworth
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
William Wordsworth
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
William Wordsworth
She Was a Phantom of Delight
William Wordsworth
The Prelude
William Wordsworth
The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth
The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth
To the Skylark
William Wordsworth
We Are Seven
William Wordsworth