I wandered lonely as a Cloud that floats on high…

These are the opening lines of one of the best-known poems in English. The poet, wandering alone, comes upon a crowd of daffodils beside a lake, beneath the trees, “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”. “Ten thousand saw I at a glance”: they outdo the sparkling waves in glee. He gazes, but “little thought / What wealth the shew to me had brought”. Only later, lying on his couch “In vacant or in pensive mood”, does he understand: the flowers “flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude”.

The scene is real. On 15 April 1802, walking with his sister Dorothy near Ullswater, in the Lake District, Wordsworth saw a long belt of daffodils, which she described in her journal: some rested their heads on the stones, others seemed to laugh with the wind. The poem appeared in 1807; the text here is the revised version of 1815, with an added stanza. Wordsworth later said that the two best lines, those of the “inward eye”, were by his wife, Mary.

I wandered lonely as a cloud, first stanza, revised text of Poems (1815); first published in 1807, 1815

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