Theme and image: Thoughts on I wandered lonely as a cloud (or ‘that daffodil poem’).

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth is one of the best-known poems in the world. Daffodils are perhaps the image most often associated with Wordsworth, and yet the poem is about so much more than a spring-time walk.

We all know those lines. I wandered lonely, as a cloud. We all know the story. A man goes for a walk and sees a crowd of daffodils …

…except the point at which the theme of the poem becomes clear centers around a man lying on a couch. There is is at the start of the third verse:

for oft when on my couch I lie

These lines situate the time and place of the poem in the same way that the lines at the start of a chapter will often situate the characters in a novel. The persona has been for a walk, seen a crowd of daffodils and returned home. The next lines tell us more about the persona’s current state:  

in vacant and in pensive mood/They flash upon that inward eye/which is the bliss of solitude.

Why is it that our minds become overwhelmed at night? Have you ever spent time alone and found your mind wandering between a hundred thoughts and memories? This is the theme of the poem. The key message. Solitude gives us space for reflection.

Everybody thinks they have read Alice In Wonderland. Everybody thinks they have read The Wind In The Willows. It can be a surprise, sometimes, to find we have not picked up a book when we feel so familiar with the story. Alice is about a girl and a Cheshire Cat, The Wind In The Willows is about water-faring rodents and Moby Dick is about a whale. This is a sign that a work of literature has become rooted in the national consciousness and so it is with I wandered lonely, as a cloud. 

The phrase familiarity breeds contempt is regularly applied to relationships between people but I think it might equally apply to our relationships with literature. Familiarity and affection are great first steps but unless we go deeper we risk missing the theme.

Theme is the message at the core of a piece of literature. It tells us more about why this work exists and what the author has to say. To focus too heavily on the daffodils is to risk missing the point of the poem. I wandered lonely as a cloud shares key ideas from the Romantic era about solitude and reflective space. There are two periods of time in the poem:

• the time of the walk
• the time in which the persona, spending time alone, reflects upon that walk. Although he is lying alone on a couch, his heart is filled with the same pleasure he felt when he first sighted the daffodils.

Although the daffodils are no doubt important to the poem, it is that reflective space – that time upon the couch – which is integral.