The verges near where I live are sea­son­al­ly awash with daf­fodils, as no doubt are yours if you live vir­tu­al­ly any­where in the UK, so what bet­ter time to take a look at that clas­sic poem that reg­u­lar­ly makes its way into the nation’s favourite poem lists, name­ly William Wordsworth’s I Wan­dered Lone­ly as a Cloud (aka Daf­fodils)? I’m less cer­tain about nowa­days, but when I was young, this poem was the one that lit­er­al­ly every­one knew. If pushed to quote a line of poet­ry you could always fall back upon “I wan­dered lone­ly as a cloud” in the same way you might have said “To be or not to be” if pushed to quote Shake­speare.

Wordsworth was the man who helped to launch the Roman­tic move­ment in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture when, in 1798, he pub­lished Lyri­cal Bal­lads with Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge. As well as being a vol­ume of poems by the two men, the work includ­ed a pref­ace expound­ing the poets’ lit­er­ary the­o­ry and prin­ci­ples. They want­ed to make poet­ry acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son by writ­ing verse in com­mon, every­day lan­guage and with com­mon, every­day sub­jects as the focus. This was against the grain, of course — how often do we find an artist, famous to us today, push­ing the bound­aries of con­ven­tion in their own time?

Although ini­tial­ly received mod­est­ly, Lyri­cal Bal­lads came to be seen as a mas­ter­piece and launched both poets into the pub­lic gaze, so when in 1807 Wordsworth pub­lished Poems, in Two Vol­umes, includ­ing Daf­fodils, he was already a well-known fig­ure in lit­er­ary cir­cles. Wordsworth had talked of poet­ry being “the spon­ta­neous over­flow of pow­er­ful feel­ings: it takes its ori­gin from emo­tion rec­ol­lect­ed in tran­quil­i­ty”, and Daf­fodils is the per­fect illus­tra­tion of what he meant ( 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…) .

It was inspired by Wordsworth and his sis­ter Dorothy hav­ing come across a long and strik­ing swathe of daf­fodils whilst out on a stroll around Ull­swa­ter in April 1802. Dorothy was a keen diarist who record­ed her own feel­ings about the daf­fodils, and this like­ly helped William frame his poem, and indeed, Wordsworth’s wife Mary also con­tributed a cou­ple of lines to the poem: it was a real fam­i­ly affair. If you want to remind your­self of the poem beyond its immor­tal open­ing line, here it is…

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.