I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth
1. Read the poem and identify the setting in stanzas 1-3 and in stanza 4
The setting in stanzas 1-3 is the countryside:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
i)
j)
Cloud
Hill
Daffodils
Trees
Lake
Breeze
Bay
Milky Way
Waves
Stars
The setting of the fourth stanza is the speaking voice’s bedroom: “When on my couch I lie in
vacant or in pensive mood”
2. Analysis of the poem
The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is written in 1804 by William Wordsworth.
Reading the title we can notice three important words: “Wandered” “Lonely” “Cloud” and the
reader may expect that the poem talks about someone who goes without a destination.
If the reader pays attention to the title, he notices a simile “as a cloud”: the speaking voice
compares himself to a cloud.
The protagonist of the poem is I, that is the speaking voice. The pronoun I is connected to
lonely and this underlines the subjective situation of the speaking voice: the poem presents
the point of view of the poet.
The setting of the poem is the countryside and it is organized into four stanzas.
In the poem we can find four important themes:
o Solitude
o Subjective emotional reaction
o Central position of the eye/I
o Language of sense impression
o Imagination
In the first stanza the poet introduces the situation: he walks alone if were a cloud and he look
the beauty of the nature. He sees daffodils: they are in big quantity, they are together and
they are moving.
The poet uses the rhetoric figure of personification, as a matter of fact daffodils are crowd and
usually crowd is an adjective that it refers to people and so daffodils represent human being.
In the fourth line we can notice the colour of the daffodils: Golden. The reader may understand
that the daffodils are precious and beautiful.
In the second stanza the speaking voice describes the way he sees the daffodils.
Here the reader can find a big contrast between the poet (a lonely person) and the daffodils
(crowd).
Saw I is a syntactic deviation and its purpose is to place the subjective experience of the poet
in the middle of the line; it also underlines the strict relationship between the poet and nature.
In the third stanza the speaking voice underlines the contrast between the poet and the nature
“the waves beside them danced but they out-did the sparking waves in glee”.
Here the reader can understand a new aspect of nature: nature brings happiness to the poet
as a matter of fact the speaking voice says “A poet could not be gay, in such a jocund
company”.
The last stanza is set in a room, probably a dining room, because the speaking voice is set
down on the couch. He thinks about nature and he is happy “And then my heart with pleasure
fills, and dances with the daffodils”.
Nature is carrier of wealth as a matter of fact it inspires the poet.
We may understand that the poet wrote this poem in a later moment from the experience.
Poetry is a record of memories, it is the result of an emotion recollected in tranquillity
therefore the poem is the result of an experience that has been filtered by the emotional
reaction of the speaking voice which is generally as subjective eye/I.
In romantic poetry feelings have a very important role, but we can find also reason: romantic
poets have not forgotten it.
The ultimate purpose of the romantic poetry is the pleasure.
In the end the reader can notice that the poet uses a simple language, the language of nature
and that he uses sometimes the progressive aspect because it adds movement, dynamism to
the scene.