Discussion. 1. In which stanzas does the poet express his love for the dandelion? 2. Which stanzas tell why the dandelion is so dear to the poet? 3. Where must the poet have lived to learn what he tells us in these stanzas? 4. Use your own words for “rich earth’s ample round.” 5. Name some “prouder summer-blooms.” 6. What gold “drew the Spanish prow,” and through what “Indian seas”? 7. What gold wrinkles “the lean brow of age” and robs “the lover’s heart of ease”? How does the dandelion’s gold differ from it? 8. Explain the last three lines of stanza 2, and name any other common things we do not value enough. 9. How can the poet look at the dandelion, but see the tropics and Italy? 10. What “eyes are in the heart, and heed not space or time”? 11. Has a poet more vivid imagination than other people? Why? 12. Compare the expression “eyes are in the heart, and heed not space or time” with that of Wordsworth in “The Daffodils,” page 59, lines 21 and 22, “that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude,” and with that of Trowbridge in “Midwinter,” page 83, lines 15 and 16, “in my inmost ear is heard the music of a holier bird.” 13. Is there a similar idea in these expressions? 14. Which do you like best, “inward eye,” “inmost ear,” or “eyes in the heart”? 15. The dandelion is compared to gold and to sunshine; which comparison had the poet in mind in the first two lines of the last stanza? In the next four lines? 16. The flower reflects its “scanty gleam of heaven” in glowing color; how can human hearts reflect it?

Phrases

THE DAFFODILS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,