I wandered Lonely as a Cloud Poem Summary and Analysis

Daffodils Summary

This article deals with the Daffodils Summary and Analysis. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Poem summary or daffodils summary provide information to the most significant examples of Romantic poetry.  The poem is a composition of Romantic poet William Wordsworth around 1804. However, he subsequently made revisions with the final version in 1815. This poem aims at exploring the relationship between nature and humanity. It focuses on the aspect that nature and humanity are interdependent. A strong bond with nature is the key to human happiness.

Daffodils Summary in Short

This article is about I wandered Lonely as a Cloud Poem Summary by William Wordsworth. It aims to explain daffodils Summary in short. It depicts the impression of the poet on seeing the daffodils while he walks in the countryside of England’s Lake District.

The poet walks alone, like a solitary cloud in the sky floating over hills and valleys. All of a sudden, the speaker sees a long and bustling row of daffodils. These daffodils were near the lake. Also, the trees flutter and shift as the breeze blows them.

The poet considers the daffodils to stars in the sky. This way, the speaker notes how the flowers seem to go on without end, alongside a bay. The speaker feels that ten thousand or so daffodils. Moreover, all the heads moving as if they were dancing.

Also, he saw the waves glinting on the bay beside the daffodils. However, the daffodils seem more joyful to the speaker than those sparkling waves. The poet couldn’t help being cheerful and happy. He rejoiced in the cheerful company of the daffodils.

The speaker gazed at the daffodils being very thoughtful and mesmerized. Also, he could not express the full extent of the positive effects of encountering them.

After this experience with the daffodils, the poet often lies on the couch, either absent-minded or becoming thoughtful. That was a time the daffodils come back to the poet’s imaginative memory. The access to which is a gift of solitude. It fills the poet with joy as his mind begins to dance with the daffodils.

This poem depicts a sense of togetherness between humanity (as represented by the poet) and nature (as represented by the daffodils).  This togetherness is partly rendered by the personification of the daffodils. This personification runs throughout the poem—they are “dancing” in every stanza.

Moreover, the speaker compares himself to a natural element i.e. a cloud. So, the human component of the poem is nature and the natural component of humanity.

The poem suggests that this togetherness is something instinctive. It’s so clearly depicted that the beauty of the daffodils had an instant impact on the poet. This is the reason why the speaker “gazed and gazed”. However, it was only later, when the experience came again in the speaker’s mind, that the poet realized its full significance.

In this moment of solitude, the poet concludes on the experience of the daffodils as the way to happiness. The daffodils represent—natural beauty, happiness, merry, and bliss. This experience of nature and humanity fills the poet’s life with blessings and contentment.

In the mind of the poet, he is again dancing “with the daffodils.” The poem, thus, reveals that communion with nature is not just a momentary joy, but it is something deeper and lasts for long.

The reader is left with the distinct impression that if he would not have encountered such experiences with nature, the speaker would have returned to a genuine feeling of loneliness only hinted at by the title.

The stanzas in the poem also make it clear to the reader that the togetherness is, of course, not exclusively about daffodils, but rather about nature more generally. The poet mentions “The stars” and “the sparkling waves” both.

They suggest a series of links between the smaller, less noticeable elements of the natural world (like the daffodils), humankind (like the poet), and the universe at large (the stars).

Although each of them is different, yet they are present together. This is to reflect the fact that they are all in close association with one another. However, people have to make an effort to experience this spiritual unity. They can do it when they engage themselves with the natural world as the poet does in this poem.

The poem, thus, is an attempt to make realize people the way to true happiness and joy. Also, it develops the quality of humanity which leads to the welfare of all. The poem contains a message to actively engage with nature. It gives people a chance to render their true service on the planet it inhabits.