In the third stanza of “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” the speaker explicitly identifies himself as a poet. That detail has inspired generations of readers to associate the speaker with the man who wrote the poem: William Wordsworth. This association is further supported by the fact that the poem recounts an experience that Wordsworth had while touring England’s famous Lake District in 1802. Walking through the countryside with his younger sister Dorothy, Wordsworth was struck by a vision of daffodils lining the shores of a glacial lake. The poem he wrote about this experience two years later transformed this simple image of dancing flowers into an exploration of nature’s capacity to provide spiritual nourishment. The poem also echoes a claim that Wordsworth had made in his preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800: namely, that poetry takes its origin from “emotion recollected in tranquility.” Wordsworth revamps this idea in “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” which concludes with a meditation on the power of the imagination. Specifically, he explores the ability of the “inward eye” (line 21) to replay important memories, thereby transforming the sorrow of loneliness into the “bliss of solitude” (line 22). Though originally published in 1807, Wordsworth made substantial revisions to the poem in 1815. This guide quotes from the later edition.

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