I Wonder Lonely As A Cloud By W. Words Worth

TOMESCU GEORGETA-CLAUDIA ANUL I, ENGLEZA – ITALIANA

“I wander lonely as a cloud” by W. Wordsworth I choose the structuralist approach to analyze W. Wordsworth’s poem, usually considered his most famous work. 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 an ABABCC rhyme scheme. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter. This particular rhyme scheme, with the two last lines of each stanza rhyming, gives the poem a joyful rhythm, which mirrors the feeling of the speaker. The rhyme scheme and structured rhythm also gives the poem a sing-song sound, like a nursery rhyme that a mother would recite to her children to comfort them, indicating that the speaker's experience with nature is an experience of comfort and bliss. W. Wordsworth’s poem is descriptive and detailed. He used beautiful imagery to evoke emotions, thoughts, and feelings in his readers. The poet wants the reader to feel what he felt. The imagery is so vivid that you could see the scenes rolling out before you. The plot of the poem is simple. Wordsworth believed it "an elementary feeling and simple expression". „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.” The speaker is wandering as if among the clouds, viewing a belt of daffodils, next to a lake whose beauty is overshadowed, in a state of worldly detachment; his wandering is “As lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills,”. What he is thinking of, we never really uncover, but his description leaves us to analyze his words as a sort of “head in the clouds” daydream-like state where his thoughts are far away, unconcerned with the immediate circumstances in which he finds himself. He uses these two introductory lines to describe the disconnected and dispassionate ways that we all live our lives; walking through life in a haze of daily ritual and monotonous distractions, in a pointless and spiritually disinterested state where we fail as emotional creatures to appreciate the quiet beauties of life that we, as human beings, need for spiritual sustenance. W. Wordsworth’s 1

“lonely cloud” is our own private impersonal perception of the world, floating miles above it and missing the quiet virtues of nature, beauty, and other sources of emotional nourishment. As William Wordsworth’s narrator is walking, he notices “A host, of golden daffodils;… Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” Wordsworth goes on to describe these “golden daffodils” as a vast plot of swaying flowers around the fringes of a bay, outdoing the beauty of the ocean’s waves with their own golden oscillation. The first line of the poem, metaphorically compares the speaker to a cloud. The idea that the cloud is described as „lonely” implies that aspects of nature are solitary beings, and therefore it is suggested that the speaker is alone. The comparison to a cloud gives the reader the impression that the speaker's spirit is unbounded and light-hearted, just as a cloud is a light-weight, free-flowing image. The image of solitude and the idea that the speaker/author has made this poem personal through the use of the personal pronoun "I," alludes to the idea that man's experience with nature is a personal phenomena, that differs depending on the individual. The reversal of usual syntax in particularly phrases, like "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" is used as part of emphasis. Loneliness, it seems, is only a human emotion, unlike the mere solitariness of the cloud. The memory of the daffodils is given permanence (particularly through comparison with the stars), in contrast to the transitory nature of life: „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.” Stanza two indulges in overstatement. No hillside could contain as many flowers as there are stars in a galaxy; a "never-ending line" on Earth could only exist if there were a globe-circling band uninterrupted by oceans; "a glance that takes in ten thousand flowers (no more and no less) is similarly fanciful. The hyperbole expresses the intensity of the speaker's excitement and joyous images. As with "fluttering" in the concluding line of stanza 1, "tossing" in the same position in the second stanza interrupts the iambic tetrameter with a trochaic substitution that emphasizes the sense of movement. All four stanzas contain, on purpose, a different grammatical form of the word "dance. With stanza three the poet's view expands to include the waves of the bay, whose dance movements are out-done by the sprightly flowers. "A poet could not but be gay" is a reminder of his previous aloofness that had to succumb to the glee of the jocund company. He does not compete in 2

the dance movements, but gazes and feels enriched by the experience. The wealth mentioned in the stanza's final line underscores that the earlier use of "golden" imports not only color but riches of an imaginative and intellectual sort. Since the final line does not involve the movement of earlier participles, it proceeds with iambic regularity of meter. “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;” In the last stanza, it is revealed that this scene is only a memory of the pensive speaker. 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. The scene of the last verse mirrors the readers' situation: „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.” The poet has been changed by his imaginative experience involving the massed daffodils and the accompanying bay waters. Earlier loneliness is now blissful solitude. The bliss comes from what he has imaginatively created and is able to summon to his mind's eye. That creation is his poem in which flowers of only vegetable animation can be jocund, feel glee, dance for his entertainment, and counteract his melancholy. Such is the power of nature, a company in which humanity should be not merely silent partners but active participants. The memory of the daffodils is retained in the speaker's mind and soul to be cherished forever. When he is 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. Personification is used within the poem, particularly with regards to the flowers themselves. He thinks that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, as the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling. 3

Nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human mind. All manifestations of the natural world elicit noble, elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these manifestations. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development. A good relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both the spiritual and the social worlds. Wordsworth praised the power of the human mind. Using memory and imagination, individuals could overcome difficulty and pain. The transformative powers of the mind are available to all, regardless of an individual’s class or background. One of the main motifs of the poem is wandering and wanderers. The speaker of Wordsworth’s poem is an inveterate wanderer, he roams solitarily. Active wandering allows the character to experience and participate in the vastness and beauty of the natural world. Moving from place to place also allows the wanderer to make discoveries about himself. While wandering, speaker uncovers the visionary powers of mind and understands the influence of nature. The speaker of this poem takes comfort in a walk he once took after he has returned to the grit and desolation of city life. Recollecting his wanderings allows him to transcend his present circumstances. Another motif is the memory. Memory allows Wordsworth’s speaker to overcome the harshness of the contemporary world. Recollecting their childhoods gives adults a chance to reconnect with the visionary power and intense relationship they had with nature as children. In turn, these memories encourage adults to re-cultivate as close a relationship with nature as possible as an antidote to sadness, loneliness, and despair. The act of remembering also allows the poet to write. Poems cannot be composed at the moment when emotion is first experienced. Instead, the initial emotion must be combined with other thoughts and feelings from the poet’s past experiences using memory and imagination. The poem produced by this time-consuming process will allow the poet to convey the essence of his emotional memory to his readers and will permit the readers to remember similar emotional experiences of their own. Vision and sight could be considered another two motifs in his poetry. Wordsworth fixates on vision and sight as the vehicles through which individuals are transformed. As speaker moves through the world, he sees visions of great natural loveliness, which he captures in his memories. Later, in moments of darkness, the speaker recollects these visions Here, the speaker daydreams of former jaunts through nature, which “flash upon that inward eye / which is the bliss of solitude”. The power of sight captured by our mind’s eye enables us to find comfort even in our darkest, loneliest moments. Detailed images of natural beauty abound in

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Wordsworth’s poem, including descriptions of daffodils and clouds, which focus on what can be seen, rather than touched, heard, or felt. 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.” The plot of this poem, on the surface, is simple, depicting the poet's aimless 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 or bored. Wordsworth employs a kind of identity-switching technique, whereby nature is personified and humanity is, so to speak, nature-ized. Wordsworth describes himself as wandering “like a cloud,” and describes the field of daffodils as a dancing crowd of people. This kind of interchangeable terminology implies a unity - metaphors from either realm can be applied to the other, because the mind and the natural world are one. The lyric movingly exemplifies Wordsworth's abstract definition of poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquility." Imagination is the key that unlocks the innermost depths of the human spirit, and imagination is best awakened by contemplation and celebration of the wonders of nature. The poet describes himself as alone and lonely, detached even from nature as, cloudlike, he "floats on high o'er vales and hills." Sadness emerges from the term "lonely," but it is tempered by the superiority of the elevation and the transcendence of "on high." The cloud Wordsworth compares himself to is personified by being given the capabilities to feel lonely and to wander. The lack of involvement and idleness generated by the verb "wandered" are erased when in line 3 he focuses on the "crowd" or "host of golden daffodils." The suggested personification of the massed flowers is made definite in the end of the stanza when he describes them as "dancing in the breeze." No longer is the speaker distant, remote and aloof. The prepositions of line 5 locate him on the earth "beside the lake" and "beneath the trees." The dancers are not just yellow but costumed in rich gold for their performance. Wordsworth believes that any human being possessing a soul and beating heart would find themselves deeply touched by the scene of a thousand-fold host of yellow daffodils swaying in the breeze against the backdrop of waves breaking against the rocks of a bay. This mental image, otherwise missed by those caught up in their daily bustle and contemporary distractions, their “wandering lonely as clouds” is what we draw from nature and experience when we cease our selfdestructive pace. If we slow down we may catch by the wayside of our wanderings a spiritual creature that could serve us as a pleasant mental image or perhaps even as a meaning or purpose in life. 5

The daffodils become much more than mere flowers. They are a symbol of natural beauty and, more importantly, symbolize living a life as rich in experience and sensation as would make a life worth living. They represent, in their light-hearted dance, the joy and happiness of living an adoring and fulfilling life, embracing it for every drop of nectar it could so bring. This work is an ode to the importance of nature and the close bond between mankind and nature. Through characterization of the speaker, meter, personification, and diction, Wordsworth creates a feeling a solitary bliss with nature. William Wordsworth accepts all forms of readership and choosing to write in very plain English. His writing was a movement away from those of his peers, who wrote specifically for educated aristocrats and the intellectual elites who were, at this time, the major consumers of poetry. Instead he wrote for the average Englishman. The very fact that William Wordsworth’s “I Wander Lonely as a Cloud” is more popularly known as “Daffodils” is evidence to the poem’s significantly broader circulation and distribution in areas where “Daffodils” readership was less concerned with the formality of the poem and instead appreciated it, quite literally, for the “Daffodils”. Bibliography: 1. Fields of vision, volume I (2009) – Denis Delaney, Ciaran Ward, Carla Rho Fiorina, Longman, England; 2. www.sparknotes.com

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