MB UNIUD

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Exercises page 196                              

•1)     In the first three stanzas is set on nature the countryside:

•a.      Cloud

•b.      Vales

•c.      Hills

•d.      Daffodils

•e.      Lake

•f.       Stars

•g.      Milky way

•h.      Bay

•i.        Waves

The setting of the fourth stanza is the speaking voice's bedroom or dining room: on my couch.

•2)     The poem is written in 1804 by William Wordsworth.

Just considering the title the reader may expect the poem to be about someone who goes without a destination.

The protagonist of the poem is I, that is the speaking voice.

The pronoun I is connected to lonely and this underlines the subjective situation of the speaking voice: the poem presents the point of view of the poet.

In the title you can find a simile: the speaking voice compares himself to a cloud.

The poem is set on nature the countryside and it is organized into four stanzas.

The themes of the poem are:

•Ø       Solitude

•Ø       Subjective emotional reaction

•Ø       Central position of the eye/I

•Ø       Language of sense impression

The first stanza presents the situation.

The speaking voice goes around without a destination, he is alone and looks at the panorama: nature, flowers.

Daffodils are a lot and they are together and they are moving.

The speaking voice uses the rhetoric figure of personification, as a matter of fact daffodils are crowd and the adjective crowd is usually referred to people, so daffodils represent human being.

We now that the flowers are precious and we know also their colour: they are golden.

In the second stanza the reader may understand the way the speaking voice sees daffodils.

Here you can find an important contrast between a lonely person (the poet) and a multitude (flowers).

Saw I is a syntactic deviation and its purpose is to place the subjective experience of the poet in the middle of the line.

The third stanza is characterized by the use of the progressive aspect: it adds movement and dynamism to the scene.

The poet uses a simple language, which is the language of nature.

Here we can understand a new aspect of nature: nature brings happiness to the poet.

So the poet expresses his feelings and they come from nature.

The last stanza is set in a room, as a matter of fact the speaking voice talks about when he is on his couch and thinks about nature and so he is happy.

The poem is written on a later moment from the real experience.

Poetry is a record of memories, the result of an emotion recollected in tranquillity, of an experience that has been filtered by the emotional reaction of the speaking voice, which generally is a subjective lye.

In romantic poetry feelings have a very important role, but we can find also reason: romantic poets have not forgotten it.

Pleasure is the ultimate purpose of poetry.