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The Daffodils
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.
Los narcisos
Vagaba solitario como una nube
Que flota alto sobre colinas y valles
Cuando súbitamente vi una multitud
De acogedores narcisos dorados.
Junto al lago, bajo los árboles
bailando trémulamente en la brisa
Persistentes cual estrellas resplandecientes
Que titilan en la Vía Láctea,
En perpetua línea
A lo largo de la bahía.
Vi miles de un vistazo,
Agitando sus corolas en alegre danza.
Las olas bailaban a su lado, pero ellos,
Superaban a las olas con su alegre resplandor.
Un poeta no puede encontrarse más feliz
En tan maravillosa compañía.
Les observé sin parar, sin pensar
En la dicha que me reportaba el espectáculo.
Ahora, cada vez que reposo en mi diván,
Con ánimo sosegado o pensativo,
Resurgen fugazmente en mi consciencia,
-Que es bendición de la soledad-,
Y entonces mi corazón se llena de dicha,
Y baila con los narcisos.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH – “DAFFODILS”
CONTEXT
The poem was inspired when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came across a sight of beautiful daffodils on 15 April 1802, during their visits to the Lake District. It was written in 1804, according to Wordsworth's own account, and after Dorothy's journal entry describing the walk. Mary Moorman has pointed out the important influence of Dorothy on his brother’s poetry (1965, 27 & 96-7). Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, moved to a cottage at Grasmere in 1799. After Wordsworth married in 1802, the family continued to live there until 1813.
STRUCTURE AND FORM (METRICS)
Published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, a volume that was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries including Lord Byron. 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.
The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme ABABCC : Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter. 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. The poem makes use of 'Enjambment' which converts the poem into a continuous flow of expressions without a pause.
The WAVES .|.be SIDE .|.them DANCED ;.|.but THEY
Out- DID .|.the SPARK .|.ling WAVES .|.in GLEE :—
A PO .|.et COULD .|.not BUT .|.be GAY
FIGURES OF SPEECH
We can find several figures of speech in the poem. Throughout the poem we can find alliterations, similes, personifications or metaphors.
We can find ALLITERATION: In the 1 ST^ STANZA in:
- “lonely as a cloud” (line 1),
- “high o’er vales and Hills” (line 2) (the ‘h’ sound as in high and hills ),
- “When all at once” (line 3) (the ‘w’ and ‘o’ have the same consonant sound)
- (^) and in “Beside the Lake, beneath the trees” (line 5) (the ‘b’ sound as in beside and beneath ) In the 3 RD^ STANZA in:
- in lines 1 and 2, “The waves beside them danced / but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee” (the ‘th’ sound as in the , them and they )
- and in “what wealth the show to me had brought” (line 6) (the ‘w’ sound as in what and wealth ) In the 4 TH^ STANZA in:
- “They flash upon that inward eye” (line 3) (the ‘th’ sound as in they and that )
- “And dances with the daffodils” (line 6) (the ‘d’ sound as in dances and daffodils )
We can also find SIMILE :
In the 1 ST^ STANZA in: “lonely as a cloud” (line 1), since it is a comparison of the speaker's seclusion to that of a cloud. In the 2 ND^ STANZA in: “Continuous as the stars that shine” (line 1), where the poet compares the daffodils to stars.
The use of PERSONIFICATION is also very common: In the 1 ST^ STANZA in:
- in line 1 there is the comparison of the cloud as a lonely human.
- We have personification and METAPHOR in lines 3 and 4 because it is a comparison of daffodils to a crowd of people; and also in lines 4 and 6 because the poet is comparing the daffodils to dancing humans. In the 2 ND^ STANZA in line 6, the poet personifies the daffodils as human beings moving their heads quickly. ( “tossing their heads in sprightly dance” ) In the 3 RD^ STANZA in lines 1 and 2, the poet personifies the waves as human beings dancing and feeling happy. ( “The waves beside them danced / but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee” ) In the 4 TH^ STANZA in lines 5 and 6, the poet personifies his heart as a human being who is dancing. ( “And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the daffodils” )
And we also find EXAGGERATION/HYPERBOLE in the 2 ND^ STANZA: ten thousand at a glance … (line 5)
Questions for discussion
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. Discuss this point of view in relation to the poem. How does the poem make the reader feel the sensations Wordsworth and his sister felt?
