I used I wander Lonely as a Cloud in a previous blog post as an example of how Wordsworth does not just regard nature as something outside but it is something he can take with him wherever he goes. This is still the main impression I receive whenever I receive this poem, it opens with a wistful statement that conveys its speaker’s solitude, “I wander lonely as a cloud” but the ending is the opposite, the poet lies still on his couch and though there are no other people there, “my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils.” He eternally has his memory of the daffodils and they mean he is never truly alone but is permanently connected to nature.
We can see a similarity in Wordsworth’s descriptions in the poem “fluttering, dancing in the breeze” and “they outdid the sparking waves in glee” to one of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal entries, where she describes how the daffodils, “tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake,” (85). As well as showing the closeness between the siblings, this emphasises the freedom that the endless “host” of daffodils can bring and partially personifies the flowers, giving them the ability to laugh and dance and therefore linking this part of nature to human abilities and as both a source and result of human happiness.
Wordsworth is definitely personifying the daffodils throughout the poem as they flutter and dance about. This reminded me of Shelley's The Sensitive Plant, where flowers, wind, and other natural elements intermingle with each other. But in this poem, the daffodils are "jocund company" so elements not only behave like humans but also interact with them. They can cure loneliness. Nature nourishes Wordsworth in the same way a human can including in the arena of memory creating as you describe an item that he is connected to wherever he goes. But hey, I doubt memory has the same effect as the surprise of walking up on thousands of daffodils.
ReplyDeleteI saw the personification of nature to also highlight Wordsworth's feelings of being a part of nature all the time, even when lying on his couch. He compares himself to a lonely cloud in the first line, opening the poem with a direct connection between his feelings and nature. He sees a "crowd" of daffodils, crowd implying that they have the human nature of being in a crowd. The daffodils dance like humans dance. They have "heads" like humans have heads. They are his "company." Not only can he take this memory with him wherever he goes and become happy from it, but he is a part of nature because of nature's humanlike qualities too.
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