William Wordsworth is an English poet who lived between the 18th and 19th century. He is considered to be the founder of Romanticism along with Coleridge; together they wrote a collection of poems called “The Lyrical Ballads” to found the movement.

The movement

The movement of Romanticism was mainly focused on:

• a simple use of language, really used by men
• the aspects and effects of nature on the human mind
• humble and rustic life
• empathetic and communicative language
• spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

This is the title of a poem from the Lyrical Ballads and an example of the typical romantic poem.

The poem mainly uses words from the semantic field of nature to illustrate in the mind of the reader images of landscapes and natural elements. In the end the poem swifts from those images to the poet himself who is recollecting these memories in tranquility in order to write a poem about them, thus explaining both the cognitive effect of nature and the process of poetry.

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.
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 gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show 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.

Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud.

This was William Wordsworth!  

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