The Poem
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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. [Note] [Contents] | [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] | 5 10 15 20 |
| 1815 | |
| ... dancing ... | 1807 |
... dancing ...
| 1815 | |
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Along the Lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze. | 1807 |
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.
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[Variant 3:] This stanza was added in the edition of 1815.
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[Variant 4:]
| 18907 | |
| ... be but gay, | 1836 |
... be but gay,
The 1840 edition returns to the text of 1807.
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[Variant 5:]
| 1815 | |
| ... laughing ... | 1807 |
... laughing ...
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[Footnote A:] It was The Reverie of Poor Susan.—Ed.
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[Footnote B:] This is an error in the original printed text. Evidently a year before the above-mentioned publication in 1815: one of 1810-1815. text Ed.
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Note: The following is from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, under date, Thursday, April 15, 1802:
"When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more, and yet more; and, at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones, about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake. They looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances, and in the middle of the water, like the sea...."
In [the] edition of 1815 there is a footnote to the lines
'They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude'
to the following effect:
"The subject of these Stanzas is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it. The one which follows[A] is strictly a Reverie; and neither that, nor the next after it in succession, Power of Music, would have been placed here except for the reason given in the foregoing note."
The [being] "placed here" refers to its being included among the "Poems of the Imagination." The "foregoing note" is the note appended to 'The Horn of Egremont Castle'; and the "reason given" in it is "to avoid a needless multiplication of the Classes" into which Wordsworth divided his poems. This note of 181?[B], is reprinted mainly to show the difficulties to which Wordsworth was reduced by the artificial method of arrangement referred to. The following letter to Mr. Wrangham is a more appropriate illustration of the poem of "The Daffodils." It was written, the late Bishop of Lincoln says, "sometime afterwards." (See Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. i. pp. 183, 184); and, for the whole of the letter, see a subsequent volume of this edition.
"Grasmere, Nov. 4.
"My Dear Wrangham,—I am indeed much pleased that Mrs. Wrangham and yourself have been gratified by these breathings of simple nature. You mention Butler, Montagu's friend; not Tom Butler, but the conveyancer: when I was in town in spring, he happened to see the volumes lying on Montagu's mantelpiece, and to glance his eye upon the very poem of The Daffodils. 'Aye,' says he, 'a fine morsel this for the Reviewers.' When this was told me (for I was not present) I observed that there were 'two lines' in that little poem which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine-tenths of the reviews of the kingdom, as they would find no readers. The lines I alluded to were these:'They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.'"
'They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.'"
These two lines were composed by Mrs. Wordsworth. In 1877 the daffodils were still growing in abundance on the shore of Ullswater, below Gowbarrow Park.
Compare the last four lines of James Montgomery's poem, The Little Cloud:
'Bliss in possession will not last:
Remembered joys are never past:
At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
They were—they are—they yet shall be.'
Ed.
[Contents 1804]
[Main Contents]