Lotus Garden

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.



On a simple level this poem is a straightforward one about a landscape made beautiful by daffodils and the poet's happy memory of the sight, but it is as really more about the conflict between the pains and the joys of solitude, than about the flowers.

'Lonely as a cloud' is a strange simile. How often do you see just a single cloud floating over the landscape?! He must have had loneliness on his mind.

His problem has been that he needs solitude in order to write, and there's bliss in that; but at the same time he has suffered from loneliness.

The exhilarating, unexpected and very memorable image of the multitudinous daffodils provides him with a means of reconciling these conflicting feelings. The rhyme foreshadows this.

He declares that the real value (the 'wealth') to him of the experience is his realization that he can both retain his blissful solitude and at any time ease his melancholic loneliness by calling to mind that cheerful multitude of flowers, and the pleasurable image of himself as part of a 'jocund company'.