William Wordsworth wrote Daffodils on a stormy day in spring, while walking along with his sister Dorothy near Ullswater Lake, in England. He imagined that the daffodils were dancing and invoking him to join and enjoy the breezy nature of the fields. Dorothy Wordsworth, the younger sister of William Wordsworth, found the poem so interesting that she took 'Daffodils' as the subject for her journal. The poem contains six lines in four stanzas, as an appreciation of daffodils.
Analysis of Daffodils
I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vale 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.
Rhyming Scheme
The 'Daffodils' has a rhyming scheme throughout the poem. The rhyming scheme of the above stanza is ABAB ( A - cloud and crowd; B - hills and daffodils) and ending with a rhyming couplet CC (C - trees and breeze). The above stanza makes use of 'Enjambment' which converts the poem into a continuous flow of expressions without a pause.
Figures of Speech Used in the Poem
I wander'd lonely as a cloud - The first line makes nice use of personification and simile. The poet assumes himself to be a cloud (simile) floating in the sky. When Wordsworth says in the second line 'I' (poet as a cloud) look down at the valleys and mountains and appreciate the daffodils; it's the personification, where an inanimate object (cloud) possesses the quality of a human enabling it to see the daffodils. The line "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" is an exaggeration and a hyperbole, describing the scene of ten thousand daffodils, all together. Alliteration is the repetition of similar sounds, is applied for the word 'h', in the words - high and hills.
Title and Theme of the Poem
The title, 'Daffodils' is a simple word that reminds us about the arrival of the spring season, when the field is full of daffodils. Daffodils