Anna Wood
Carlie Wetzel
ENGL125
March 9, 2021
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Close Reading
William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a romantic commentary on the power of the mind indicating experience belongs absolutely to the observer.
Wordsworth uses imagery, personification, and tone in the speaker’s whimsical mindscape to indulge in his inner reality.
Hospitable “golden daffodils…. / and sparkling waves” welcome the reader into a temperate land with bays, hills, and valleys caressed by a gentle breeze (Wordsworth, “I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” lines 4, 14). Wordsworth is fond of using movement above all in his manipulation of the senses. Everything is possessed by dance and light: the
flowers, the waters, and the speaker’s heart (6,7-8,12-14,23). Specifically, he uses light to accentuate the ethereal nature of imagination. The speaker weightlessly glides on air as he
awes over the twinkling ballet of daffodils (7-8). Despite the waves in all their beauty, they cannot compare to the spectacle of dancing gold (13-14). Such accessory to experience is
reflective of the speaker himself. To be a lonely cloud so distant and with only the illusion of autonomy may be a prison, but the speaker nonetheless observes the other actors in his
play with appreciation and admiration. Upon his return to his vacant couch, extracted from his created paradise, he still feels fulfilled by his internal reality (19-24).
The mindscape appears to be alive in every sense but only the daffodils and the waves have any sort of human qualities. Similarly, daffodils and water play critical roles in
the Greek myth of Narcissus. Narcissus, the son of the River God, perished out of his own self obsession (Britannica). He rejected the advances of numerous lovers and died in the
pool of his own reflection, giving rise to the narcissus flower (Britannica). Wordsworth embeds the theme of reflection in the end rhyme scheme and the position of stanzas
(Wordsworth, 2,4,8,10,12,13,15,23,24). In conjunction with the use of the same symbols, Wordsworth personifies death through self reflection through the use of daffodils and
water. The golden flowers can be seen as the metaphorical product of successful creative destruction while water is the inconspicuous destructive force. In this poem, the lovely
petaled faces do not fall prey to the water’s reflection; rather, they outshine the mimicking bay through “sprightly dance” (13-14). Graceful and with much less force than the waves
below, the lonely cloud above emphasizes the disparity between the speaker and the temptation of the physical. Like the cloud, the speaker need not ignore the allure of narcissism
as he has already risen above it and found solace in inner reflection, and like the daffodils, he puts up no resistance. He simply lives beautifully.
The speaker’s impermanent body creates a profoundly reflective tone. A single cloud’s fate is hardly exciting; blown apart by winds until oblivion, or ajoin a larger cloud
cluster only to rain down. It is a matter of time before the lonely cloud ceases to exist, yet the tone is relaxed and joyous as if time and nature no longer restrain the cloud. To drift
dependently yet alone allows the cloud to effortlessly observe and romantically reflect on nature. Two lines in particular best exemplify the speaker’s appreciative tone: “When all
at once I saw a crowd,” and “what wealth the show to me had brought” (3, 18). It is as if the speaker had no intention of coming across the field of flowers, if anything they came to
him. Perhaps the dance of the daffodils is only a show because it exists only projected by the speaker’s inward eye. Whether dreaming or a deep meditative state, there is no fear of
time running out or expectation of what to encounter because the speaker had relinquished their attachment to the physical world in order to see the scene through an imaginary
lense. The fact the speaker projects himself as an aerial passerby is mostly ignored until his withdrawal of consciousness in the last stanza which reminds the audience of the power
of mind.
Glamorous daffodils and dancing lands create a dream-like setting so infatuating that the audience is distracted from the cloudy speaker, but he doesn’t need the
attention. He needs not to indulge in egoic vices or his physical presentation as the real beauty comes from introspection. While the speaker is alone, he is not lonely; his inward
world grants him freedom, company, and boundless sights to see.
Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Narcissus". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 May. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Narcissus-Greek-mythology. Accessed 6 March 2021.
Wordsworth, William. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Poetry Foundation, 1802,https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud. Accessed 6 Mar.2021.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.