William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 - 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

I wandered lonely as a cloud The waves beside them danced; but they

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

When all at once I saw a crowd, A poet could not but be gay,

A host, of golden daffodils; In such a jocund company:

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, I gazed---and gazed---but little thought

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. What wealth the show to me had brought:

Continuous as the stars that shine For oft, when on my couch I lie

And twinkle on the milky way, In vacant or in pensive mood,

They stretched in never-ending line They flash upon that inward eye

Along the margin of a bay: Which is the bliss of solitude;

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, And then my heart with pleasure fills,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a lyric poem focusing on the poet's response to the beauty of nature. (A lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet rather than telling a story or presenting a witty observation.)

The poem recaptures a moment on April 15, 1802, when Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were walking near a lake at Grasmere, Cumbria County, England, and came upon a shore lined with daffodils. Grasmere is in northwestern England's Lake District, between Morecambe Bay on the south and Solway Firth on the north. The Lake District extends twenty-five miles east to west and thirty miles north to south. Among its attractions are England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike (3,210 feet), and Esthwaite Lake and other picturesque meres radiating outward, like the points of a star, from the town of Grasmere.

1. While wandering like a cloud, the speaker happens upon daffodils fluttering in a breeze on the shore of a lake, beneath trees. Daffodils are plants in the lily family with yellow flowers and a crown shaped like a trumpet. Click here to see images of daffodils.

2. The daffodils stretch all along the shore. Because there are so many of them, they remind the speaker of the Milky Way, the galaxy that scientists say contains about one trillion stars, including the sun. The speaker humanizes the daffodils when he says they are engaging in a dance.

3. In their gleeful fluttering and dancing, the daffodils outdo the rippling waves of the lake. But the poet does not at this moment fully appreciate the happy sight before him. In the last line of the stanza, Wordsworth uses anastrophe, writing the show to me had brought instead of the show brought to me. Anastrophe is an inversion of the normal word order.

4. Not until the poet later muses about what he saw does he fully appreciate the cheerful sight of the dancing daffodils. Worsworth again uses anastrophe, writing when on my couch I lie and my heart with pleasure fills.

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