I wandered lonely as a Cloud...
I wandered lonely as a Cloud...
Poem
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 dancing Daffodils; Along the Lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze. The waves beside them danced, but the Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:- A Poet could not but be gay In such a laughing 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. They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils.
Poet
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth is one of the most famous of the first generation of English Romantic poets, and his long autobiographical poem The Prelude is considered to be perhaps the finest poem of that age. Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) were a radical departure, using 'the real language of men'; the second edition contains his often-quoted definition of poetry as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquillity'.