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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.
“Daffodils” is a lyric poem of 24 lines, divided into four rhyming stanzas with six lines each, known as sestets. The rhyme scheme of each sestet is ABABCC. The lines are written in iambic tetrameter, four groups of stressed followed by unstressed syllables. This creates a gentle, rhythmic sound, an even pace that mimics walking. Yet, what drives the underlying tension of the poem is William Wordsworth’s careful use of verbs. Although the poem begins in first-person past tense, the speaker seems to be actively searching through aimlessness (the “lonely” wanderer of the title). Urgency is achieved by the speaker’s noted surprise at seeing the field of daffodils. The use of gerund phrasing for the action of the daffodils such as “fluttering and dancing” (Line 6) and “tossing” (Line 12), as well as the “sparkling” (Line 14) sea, adds to the feeling of immediacy and amplifies the speaker’s longing to join their “jocund company” (Line 16). The liveliness of the experience is then missed when it’s revealed that it has past: “For oft, […] I lie / in vacant or in pensive mood” (Lines 19-20). Relief comes when the moment is revived and spoken of in the present tense.
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
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Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ...
William Wordsworth
London, 1802
William Wordsworth
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up
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Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
William Wordsworth
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
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She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
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She Was a Phantom of Delight
William Wordsworth
The Prelude
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The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth
The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth
To the Skylark
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We Are Seven
William Wordsworth