summary on daffodils: William Wordsworth
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The long epic poem is known as The Prelude, but Wordsworth had never decided on any title as such at the time of his death in 1850. The poet referred to it as his "Poem to Coleridge," subtitled "Growth of a Poet's Mind." He saw it as a different sort of epic, not like the classical ones dealing with the exploits of a hero in the external world. His poem was about his poetic sensibility as it developed from experiences from his early childhood on. Wordsworth worked on it for years and initially completed the poem in 1805, but he revised it continually for the rest of his life. The 1805 edition has 13 sections called books, while the 1850 edition has 14 books—he divided Book 10 into two parts. Both editions are studied today, though this study guide focuses on the version with 13 books.
The thirteen books of The Prelude are different lengths and in hundreds of lines. All the parts of the epic are in unrhymed blank verse, related in a conversational style and for the most part in the natural diction and speech patterns of ordinary people. Its stanzas do not follow patterns, unlike those in his many lyrical poems.
Each book carries a title pertaining to a period of his life, his hopes, and his experiences, as well as other information. In totality the poem is a record of his emotional, spiritual, and lyrical development from earliest times and his interactions with those closest to him, especially his sister Dorothy and his collaboration with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The narrative thread of his life is related with repeated reflections on the nature of humanity in general. Strong belief in people and their powers to create lives for themselves is mixed at times, especially at the end of the poem, with praise for the divine order.
Answer:
Summary “I wandered lonely as a cloud”
Summary
The speaker says that, wandering like a cloud floating above hills and valleys, he encountered a field of daffodils beside a lake. The dancing, fluttering flowers stretched endlessly along the shore, and though the waves of the lake danced beside the flowers, the daffodils outdid the water in glee. The speaker says that a poet could not help but be happy in such a joyful company of flowers. He says that he stared and stared, but did not realize what wealth the scene would bring him. For now, whenever he feels “vacant” or “pensive,” the memory flashes upon “that inward eye / That is the bliss of solitude,” and his heart fills with pleasure, “and dances with the daffodils.”
Form
The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.
Commentary
This simple poem, one of the loveliest and most famous in the Wordsworth canon, revisits the familiar subjects of nature and memory, this time with a particularly (simple) spare, musical eloquence. The plot is extremely simple, depicting the poet’s wandering and his discovery of a field of daffodils by a lake, the memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is lonely, bored, or restless. The characterization of the sudden occurrence of a memory—the daffodils “flash upon the inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude”—is psychologically acute, but the poem’s main brilliance lies in the reverse personification of its early stanzas. The speaker is metaphorically compared to a natural object, a cloud—“I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high...”, and the daffodils are continually personified as human beings, dancing and “tossing their heads” in “a crowd, a host.” This technique implies an inherent unity between man and nature, making it one of Wordsworth’s most basic and effective methods for instilling in the reader the feeling the poet so often describes himself as experiencing