Question

(a) Identify the poem and the poet. Describe the journey of the poet as a cloud in your own words.
poem - daffodils ​

Answer 1

Answer:

"Daffodils" is one of the most famous and best-loved poems written in the English language. It was composed by Romantic poet William Wordsworth around 1804, though he subsequently revised it—the final and most familiar version of the poem was published in 1815. The poem is based on one of Wordsworth's own walks in the countryside of England's Lake District. During this walk, he and his sister encountered a long strip of daffodils. In the poem, these daffodils have a long-lasting effect on the speaker, firstly in the immediate impression they make and secondly in the way that the image of them comes back to the speaker's mind later on. "Daffodils" is a quintessentially Romantic poem, bringing together key ideas about imagination, humanity and the natural world.

The poem begins by establishing a sense of isolation—the set-up that the visual shock of the daffodils will later break through. The speaker likens themselves—or specifically, their "lonely" way of wandering—to a cloud. The effect of this simile is similar to that of the later personification of the daffodils: both serve to link the speaker and nature together. The speaker is a stand-in for humanity more generally, so this establishes that the poem is about the relationship between mankind and the natural world. The comparison suggests that the speaker is walking about without any particular purpose, building on the idea that clouds are aimless.

The language is delicate and simple, establishing a sense of calm that is disrupted by the ecstatic joy of the daffodils' sudden appearance. It suggests a steady but not urgent walking pace, and the consonance of sounds links "lonely" and "cloud" together, reinforcing the idea of clouds as somehow isolated figures.