I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD: ANALYSIS

 

     By reading the title, the reader may expect a portrayal of the poet's feelings while wandering through natural landscapes. In fact, the three stressed words ("wandered", "lonely" and "cloud") convey a feeling of silence and loneliness, along with a lack of references; in addition, it may be important to highlight how the stresses always fall in closed "aw" sounds (maybe to make a picture of isolation).
     The poem is about a memory the poet always brings with him: the multitude of beautiful and colourful images in a field of daffodils near a calm bay.
     The text is made up of four sextains, each of them providing a particular portrayal of Nature. In the first stanza the poet decribes the sudden emotion when he sees a moltitude of yellow daffodils moving as the wind touches them. The "l" sounds in words such as "lonely, floats, hills, golden, daffodils"... remind to the reader a sense of armony, maybe even musicality; whereas the abundance of "ee" vowels possibly suggests the sound of an echoe.
The second stanza is enriched with important figures of speech, which are a simile ("as the stars that shine"), and a metaphor ("tossing their heads in sprightly dance"). The first gives a better description of the moltitude of flowers, the second, on the other hand, provides us a personification about their movements, which are compared to a dance, during which either the daffodils and the poet seem to be having a moment of leisure. The "n" sounds may suggest, as happened with the "l" sounds, a melodic atmosphere.
The third stanza continues with the joyful sensation, the poet this time is so fascinated by that glimpse he doesn't seem to be aware of it ("but little thought/what wealth the show to me had brought").
In the last stanza this wonderful image turns out to be a memory, in particular the verbs are in the present tense, whereas in the previous ones are in the past, in order to underline a sort of return to the present. The remarkable expression "the bliss of solitude" conveys to the reader the poet's sense of tranquility.

The rhyming pattern s arranged this way: ABABCC: this particular structure may suggest the contrast between past and present spoken of previously.
Last but not least, the lines seem to be shorter in the last stanza, somehow changing the rhythm.