I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

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 they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: --
A poet could not but be gay
In such a laughing company:
I gaz'd--and gaz'd--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.

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also commonly known as "Daffodils" or "The Daffodils") is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth.

It was inspired by an event on April 15, 1802, in which Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, came across a "long belt" of daffodils. Written at some time between 1804 and 1807 (in 1804 on Wordsworth's own account), it was first published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, and a revised version was published in 1815. It is written in six-line stanzas with an ababcc rhyme scheme, as in the Venus and Adonis stanza of Shakespeare but in tetrameters rather than pentameters.

It is generally considered Wordsworth's most famous work. In the "Nation's Favourite Poems", a poll carried out by the BBC's Bookworm, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" came fifth. Often anthologised, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is commonly seen as a classic of English romanticism within poetry, although Poems in Two Volumes was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries.