I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud Lyrics
That floats on high o'er vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Along the lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand 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 gaz'd--and gaz'd--but little thought
What wealth the shew 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.
About
Wordsworth was one of the ‘big six’ Romantic Poets (Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and Byron. A tenet of Romantic poetry is its focus on nature and man’s insignificance in comparison to the natural world. This was a subject of particular interest to Wordsworth.
It should be noted that life in the late 18th and early 19th Century life during the time of King George III, known — ironically given the terrible social conditions of the time — as the Romantic Era. The Romantics were also Pantheists, that is they believed that God was manifested in nature.
This immortal little poem, first published in 1807, owes a lot to William’s sister Dorothy Wordsworth. In 1802, two years before the poem was written, Dorothy recorded this in her journal of 15 April 1802:
“When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again.”
Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 2nd ed., ed. Mary Moorman 1971, 109.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud