Daffodils

The speaker in “Daffodils” recalls feeling mentally isolated, a fact made clear by the poem’s first line and original title, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” However, the speaker’s encounter with the field of flowers reminds them that there is beauty in the natural world, and they are a part of it, despite their occasional thoughts of separation and/or despondency. This, in turn, causes moments of joy for the speaker when the daffodils are recollected in the future.

As the poem begins in the past tense, the speaker remembers themselves as “lonely as a cloud” (Line 1). They perceive their status at the time as aimless and disconnected, as they “wandered” (Line 1) and “float[ed]” (Line 2) above the world. There is a level of disengagement or superiority with the world below. However, after they perused the “vales and hills” (Line 2), which may perhaps symbolize the highs and lows of life, the speaker discovered a happy surprise—a patch of flowers that filled them with awe.

“Beside the lake, beneath the trees” (Line 5), they spied some “golden daffodils” (Line 4). While the speaker recalls the bright color of the flowers, they also remember being drawn to the fact that they were not solitary.