Textuality » 3A Interacting

MCCoco - Daffodils by William Wordsworth
by MCCoco - (2010-11-12)
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DAFFODILS by William Wordsworth

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

The title makes me expect a description of the flowers, and the feelings they give to the poet.
The poem begins with the pronoun I, so the description is subjective, made by the poet who tells about a walk in solitude in a state of floating mind evanescent like a cloud in the sky when he suddenly sees a lot of yellow daffodils moving in the gentle wind near a lake and in the middle of the trees.
The rhythm is regular, jambic, slow: there are four stresses each line with a change in the last that has the stress on the first syllable. The rhyme scheme is ABABCC, easy to remember. There are many rhetorical devices, a simile (lonely as a cloud), personification of the daffodils: a crowd, a host, fluttering and dancing, a metaphor (golden daffodils), alliteration (Beside/beneath). The sound of the words is sweet, with few hard letters.
The great importance of nature for the poet can be noticed by the choice of the semantic field of words connected with nature, evident in all the lines. The consideration given to natural elements is clear for the fact that the flowers are personificated and animated.