Poems (Wordsworth, 1815)/Volume 1/I wandered lonely

For other versions of this work, see I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

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Goody Blake and Harry Gill

Poems Volume I (1815)
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely

Reverie of Poor Susan

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2027978Poems Volume I — I wandered lonely1815William Wordsworth

XIII.

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 shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
^[1]They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

↑ The subject of these Stanzas is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it. The one which follows is strictly a Reverie; and neither that, nor the next after it in succession, "The Power of Music," would have been placed here except for the reason given in the foregoing note.

[1] The subject of these Stanzas is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it. The one which follows is strictly a Reverie; and neither that, nor the next after it in succession, "The Power of Music," would have been placed here except for the reason given in the foregoing note.

[1]