We'll just start right off with one of Wordsworth's most-famous poems, which Nadia says she has read, and I know Sadie has because I assigned her a book of poetry that contains it last year.
This one gets a lot of play on Pinterest and Etsy, with people illustrating it or putting the words over a photo they took of some pretty daffodils. Since daffodils are my favorite flower, I've long been partial to it myself.
Interestingly, the idea for this poem came from some observations his sister Dorothy made while taking a nature walk, and his wife Mary contributed the crucial lines "They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude."
You can see a lot of Romantic ideals in this -- seeking meaning from nature, celebrating a single moment of natural beauty, contrasts of the harshness and beauty in nature, thinking of nature as pure and able to cleanse people...
by 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,
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
Outdid 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.
Discussion Questions:
1. What emotions is Wordsworth trying to evoke in the reader with this poem?
2. How do the daffodils form a contrast to the narrator? How are they different? (Go beyond the obvious "they are plants and he is human.")
3. What changes over the course of this poem?
1. Joy, I guess. It seems to be written with the intention of sharing the happiness the narrator feels, what with all the vivid descriptions.
ReplyDeleteJoy is definitely one. Surprise too, maybe? Enthusiasm?
Delete2. He was 'wandering lonely as a cloud' while they were 'tossing their heads in sprightly dance'. They're happy and in a large, lighthearted company; he's on his own and, again, lonely.
ReplyDeleteYup, definitely.
Delete3. The narrator's emotional mindset. He stops feeling lonely - and, from the impression we get, kind of sad - whenever he's alone the daffodils come to mind and his 'heart with pleasure fills'.
ReplyDeleteYes -- he's able to remember and almost re-experience that feeling of joy and community. This is actually a handy mental trick to help you pull out of unhappy or blah feelings.
Delete1. Happiness, contentedness, sentimentality, enjoyment of a simple, natural beauty seem to be the theme of this poem. I don't know that he is actually trying to convey this feeling through his poem, but whenever I read it, I always feel a longing for the pleasure of seeing those daffodils, and rather than actually experiencing the emotions I listed above, though I do to some extent I suppose, mostly I just experience the same kind of longing to take part in all those emotions, as I do to enjoy the daffodils that are the cause of them. So perhaps he is trying for THAT emotion? Probably not though, haha :P
ReplyDeleteYeah, he might be evoking the feeling of "wow, that must have been so beautiful." Or maybe hoping the reader will remember seeing something amazing like that and how they felt -- like watching waves at the beach or looking out over a mountain range.
Delete2. Well, he describes the daffodils as "sprightly" and "jocund" and says that they are dancing, so essentially, the daffodils are bright and cheerful and make one happy. But then he says that he "wandered lonely as a cloud" and that he sometimes lies on his couch "in vacant or in pensive mood". So the flowers are happy and he is, apparently often, taking from how many times he says so in his poem, despondent. And digging REALLY deep, he mentions since the daffodils were SO beautiful and uplifting, they became something that whenever he's sad, he sees and is comforted. So the daffodils are steadily sweet, while he is rather inconsistent with his moods. I'm afraid that that's rather a weak distinction though!
ReplyDeleteYes! He is deliberately lifting up and brightening his moods by pulling out the memory of those bright and cheery daffodils. It's a good mental trick -- finding a memory that makes you physically smile, it's so good, and reminding yourself of it if you're feeling blue or just tired of everything.
Delete3. The narrator goes from being sad to happy; lonely to with millions of dear companions. And he says that this isn't just a one time thing. Like now, every time he's depressed, he thinks about the daffodils, and again and again, they work their magic on him. Makes me wonder, though, if in the last verse he's using the daffodils as a sort of metaphor. I mean, I know when I'm feeling upset about things, I comfort myself with general happy things. Maybe the memory of the daffodils is just a metaphor for him counting his blessings. But then again, this guy is a poet, so he probably actually does just be depressed, think about flowers, and stop being depressed. I wish all life's problems could really be fixed with flowers!!
ReplyDeleteHaha! Being a poet does sometimes go hand in hand with melancholy. I sometimes wonder if feeling melancholy leads to wanting to write poetry, or if being a poet makes you think about melancholy things. Or if they're too entwined for there to be any kind of cause and effect...
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