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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
William Wordsworth
Daffodils
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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
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Key item: With his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth founded the Romantic movement in British poetry with the publication of their Lyrical Ballads, turning away from the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment.
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was one of the foremost poets of the English Romantic movement, whose work transformed the landscape of English literature by emphasizing emotion, imagination, and the profound beauty of nature. He was born in Cockermouth in the scenic region of the Lake District, which deeply influenced his love of landscapes, rural life, and natural beauty. Wordsworth’s early life was marked by personal tragedy, including the death of his mother when he was eight and his father when he was thirteen, experiences that profoundly shaped his sensitivity to human emotion and loss.
He studied at St John's College, Cambridge, where he cultivated his literary interests. In 1790, Wordsworth traveled to France, witnessing the French Revolution, an experience that initially inspired hope for social and political change and influenced his early radical ideals. Returning to England, he settled in the Lake District and began his lifelong poetic exploration of nature, memory, and the human spirit.
Wordsworth’s collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), a revolutionary work that championed simple, everyday language and ordinary subjects as suitable for poetry. His magnum opus, The Prelude, is an autobiographical epic poem reflecting on the growth of his mind, consciousness, and poetic imagination. Throughout his career, Wordsworth’s poetry celebrated the spiritual and moral value of nature, childhood innocence, and the ordinary experiences of rural life.
In recognition of his literary achievements, Wordsworth was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1843, a position he held until his death in 1850. His legacy endures as a poet who bridged personal reflection with universal themes, elevating the natural world and human feeling as central subjects of poetic inquiry. (ChatGPT)
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Who were the Romantic Poets?
“Daffodils” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
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.
from https://classicalpoets.org/2016/01/07/10-greatest-poems-ever-written/
Analysis of the Poem
Through the narrator’s chance encounter with a field of daffodils by the water, we are presented with the power and beauty of the natural world. It sounds simple enough, but there are several factors that contribute to this poem’s greatness. First, the poem comes at a time when the Western world is industrializing and man feels spiritually lonely in the face of an increasingly godless worldview. This feeling is perfectly harnessed by the depiction of wandering through the wilderness “lonely as a cloud” and by the ending scene of the narrator sadly lying on his couch “in vacant or in pensive mood” and finding happiness in solitude. The daffodils then become more than nature; they become a companion and a source of personal joy. Second, the very simplicity itself of enjoying nature—flowers, trees, the sea, the sky, the mountains etc.—is perfectly manifested by the simplicity of the poem: the four stanzas simply begin with daffodils, describe daffodils, compare daffodils to something else, and end on daffodils, respectively. Any common reader can easily get this poem, as easily as her or she might enjoy a walk around a lake.
Third, Wordsworth has subtly put forward more than just an ode to nature here. Every stanza mentions dancing and the third stanza even calls the daffodils “a show.” At this time in England, one might have paid money to see an opera or other performance of high artistic quality. Here, Wordsworth is putting forward the idea that nature can offer similar joys and even give you “wealth” instead of taking it from you, undoing the idea that beauty is attached to earthly money and social status. This, coupled with the language and topic of the poem, which are both relatively accessible to the common man, make for a great poem that demonstrates the all-encompassing and accessible nature of beauty and its associates, truth and bliss.
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