"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also commonly known as "Daffodils"^[1] or "The Daffodils") is a poem by William Wordsworth.

It was inspired by an April 15, 1802 event in which Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, came across a "long belt" of daffodils. Written in 1804, it was first published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, and a revised version was released in 1815, which is more commonly known.^[2] It consists of four six-line stanzas, in iambic tetrameter and an ABABCC rhyme scheme.

It is usually considered Wordsworth's most famous work.^[3] In the "Nation's Favourite Poems", a poll carried out by the BBC's Bookworm,^[4] "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" came fifth.^[5] Well known, and often anthologised, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is commonly seen as a classic of English romanticismwithin poetry, although the original version was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries.

Lyrical Ballads, a series of poems by both himself and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had been first published in 1798 and had started the romantic movement in England. It had brought Wordsworth and the other Lake poets into the poetic limelight. Wordsworth had published nothing new since the 1800 edition ofLyrical Ballads, and a new publication was eagerly awaited.^[10] Wordsworth had, however, gained some financial security by the 1805 publication of the fourth edition of Lyrical Ballads; it was the first from which he enjoyed the profits of copyright ownership. He decided to turn away from "The Recluse" and turn more attention to the expedient publication of Poems in Two Volumes, in which "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" would appear.^[11]

Composition and themes

The poem is 24 lines long, consisting of four six-line stanzas. Each stanza is formed by a quatrain, then a couplet, to form a sestet and a ABABCC rhyme scheme.^[1] The fourth- and third-last lines were not composed by Wordsworth, but by his wife, Mary. Wordsworth considered them the best lines of the whole poem.^[1][12] Like most works by Wordsworth, it is romantic in nature;^[13] the beauty of nature, unkempt by humanity, and a reconciliation of man with his environment, are two of the fundamental principles of the romantic movement within poetry. The poem is littered with emotionally strong words, such as "golden", "dancing" and "bliss".

The plot of the poem is simple. Wordsworth believed it "an elementary feeling and simple expression".^[14] The speaker is wandering as if among the clouds, viewing a belt of daffodils, next to a lake whose beauty is overshadowed:^[15]

In the last stanza, it is revealed that this scene is only a memory of the pensive speaker.^[12] This is marked by a change from a narrative past tense to the present tense. as a conclusion to a sense of movement within the poem: passive to active motion; from sadness to blissfulness.^[16] The scene of the last verse mirrors the readers' situation as they take in the poem:^[19]

Like the maiden's song in "The Solitary Reaper," the memory of the daffodils is etched in the speaker's mind and soul to be cherished forever. When he's feeling lonely, dull or depressed, he thinks of the daffodils and cheers up. The full impact of the daffodils' beauty (symbolizing the beauty of nature) did not strike him at the moment of seeing them, when he stared blankly at them but much later when he sat alone, sad and lonely and remembered them.^[17]

Personification n. 人格化；化身；拟人法（一种修辞手法）；象征is used within the poem, particularly with regards to the flowers themselves, and the whole passage consists of images appearing within the mind of the poet.

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a poem about nature. With his pure and poetic language, Wordsworth brings us into a beautiful world where there are daffodils, trees and breeze. We follow the poet at every turn of his feelings. We share his melancholy when he “wandered lonely as a cloud” and his delight the moment his heart “with pleasure fills ”. We come to realize the great power of nature that may influence our life deeply as revealed in the poem. 

  Edgar Allan Poe once described poetry as “ music… combined with a pleasure idea”. In the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, the poet also makes great use of the “music ”of the language to achieve sound beauty in addition to convey meaning. He employs masculine rhyme in “a, b, a, b, c, c” pattern to receive emphasis as a musical effect. (e.g. “cloud” (a), “hills” (b), “crowd” (a), “daffodils” (b), “trees” (c), “breeze” (c) in stanza 1). He also achieves musical quality by the management of alliteration (e.g. “That floats on high o’er vales and hills” in line 2 and “Beside the lake, beneath the trees” in line 5) and assonance (e.g. “beneath the trees in line 5” and “ They stretched in never-ending line” in line 9) and consonance (e.g. “ vales and hills” in line 2 ). Besides the repetition of sounds, the poet also makes his poem a strong appeal for us in language that is rhythmical. He arranges his poem in lines of iambic tetrameter in the main with alternation of iambic trimeter. 

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” was written by William Wordsworth, the representative poet of the early romanticism. As a great poet of nature, William Wordsworth was the first to find words for the most elementary sensations of man face to face with natural phenomena. These sensations are universal and old but, once expressed in his poetry, become charmingly beautiful and new. His deep love for nature runs through short lyrics such as “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” 

. .William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a lyric poem focusing on the poet's response to the beauty of nature. (A lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet rather than telling a story or presenting a witty observation.) The final version of the poem was first published in Collected Poems in 1815. An earlier version was published in Poems in Two Volumes in 1807 as a three-stanza poem. The final version has four stanzas. Wordsworth wrote the earlier version in 1804, two years after seeing the lakeside daffodils that inspired the poem.  

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side, we fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore & that the little colony had so sprung up— But as we went along there were more & yet more & at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road . . .  [S]ome rested their heads on [mossy] stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here & there a little knot & a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity & unity & life of that one busy highway... —Rain came on, we were wet. 

Summary, Stanza 1

While wandering like a cloud, the speaker happens upon daffodils fluttering in a breeze on the shore of a lake, beneath trees. Daffodils are plants in the lily family with yellow flowers and a crown shaped like a trumpet. Click here to see images of daffodils.

Summary, Stanza 2

The daffodils stretch all along the shore. Because there are so many of them, they remind the speaker of the Milky Way, the galaxy that scientists say contains about one trillion stars, including the sun. The speaker humanizes the daffodils when he says they are engaging in a dance.

Summary, Stanza 3

In their gleeful fluttering and dancing, the daffodils outdo the rippling waves of the lake. But the poet does not at this moment fully appreciate the happy sight before him. In the last line of the stanza, Wordsworth uses anastrophe, writing the show to me had brought instead of the show brought to me. Anastrophe is an inversion of the normal word order.

Summary, Stanza 4

Not until the poet later muses about what he saw does he fully appreciate the cheerful sight of the dancing daffodils. Worsworth again uses anastrophe, writing when on my couch I lie and my heart with pleasure fills.
Examples of Figures of Speech

Stanza 1

Alliteration: lonely as a cloud (line 1).
Simile: Comparison (using as) of the speaker's solitariness to that of a cloud (line 1).
Personification: Comparison of the cloud to a lonely human. (line 1)
Alliteration: high o'er vales and Hills (line 2).
Alliteration: When all at once (line 3). (Note that the w and o have the same consonant sound.)
Personification/Metaphor: Comparison of daffodils to a crowd of people (lines 3-4).
Alliteration: golden Daffodils (line 4).
Alliteration: Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Personification/Metaphor: Comparison of daffodils to dancing humans (lines 4, 6).
.......
Structure and Rhyme Scheme

.......The poem contains four stanzas of six lines each. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. The stanza then ends with a rhyming couplet. Wordsworth unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the experience at the lake and the last stanza on the memory of that experience. 
Meter

.......The lines in the poem are in iambic tetrameter, as demonstrated in the third stanza: 

..........1..............2..................3...................4
The WAVES.|.be SIDE.|.them DANCED;.|.but THEY
......1................2..................3................4
Out-DID.|.the SPARK.|.ling WAVES.|.in GLEE:—
....1.............2.............3.............4
A PO.|.et COULD.|.not BUT.|.be GAY
......1.............2...........3............4
In SUCH.|.a JOC.|.und COM.|.pa NY:
.......1................2..................3.................4
I GAZED—.|.and GAZED—.|.but LIT.|.tle THOUGHT
...........1....................2............3...............4
What WEALTH.|.the SHOW.|.to ME.|.had BROUGHT:

In the first stanza, line 6 appears to veer from the metrical format. However, Wordsworth likely intended fluttering to be read as two syllables (flut' 'RING) instead of three so that the line maintains iambic tetrameter. 

Themes

1. Nature' s beauty uplifts the human spirit. Lines 15, 23, and 24 specifically refer to this theme. 
2. People sometimes fail to appreciate nature's wonders as they go about their daily routines. Lines 17 and 18 suggest this theme. 
3. Nature thrives unattended. The daffodils proliferate in splendor along the shore of the lake without the need for human attention.
.

Study Questions and Writing Topics

1. In the preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth presents his ....definition of poetry:

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

....Write an essay explaining whether "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" illustrates what Wordsworth was saying in his definition.
2. Wordsworth believed that nature and human intuition impart a kind of knowledge and wisdom not found in books and formal education. Do you ....agree? Explain your answer.
3. Identify an example of hyperbole in the poem. 
4. If Wordsworth had written walked instead of wandered in the first line, would he have ruined the poem? Explain your answer.
5. Write a short poem focusing on a natural wonder—a flower, a mountain, a waterfall, a violent storm, an animal, or a solar or lunar eclipse—that ....impressed you. .

Notes

1] Wordsworth made use of the description in his sister's diary, as well as of his memory of the daffodils in Gowbarrow Park, by Ullswater. Cf. Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, April 15, 1802: "I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones . . .; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing." For this reason, some readers will know this poem as "Daffodils," a title used, for instance, by Arthur Quiller-Couch in his edition, The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900 (1919): no. 530.

21-22] Wordsworth said that these were the two best lines in the poem and that they were composed by his wife.