Not Really Lonely - Poem Review

Not really lonely

In his poem, "I wandered lonely as a cloud," William Wordsworth uses the

image of a wandering cloud flying across valleys and hills. The wandering cloud notices a large

crowd of daffodils beside a lake and trees, and watches the dancing and fluttering of nature.

Wordsworth's poem is a lyrical ballad showing the feelings of the poet speaker throughout the

poem. Through the use of vivid imagery like daffodils and stars, turning nature around him alive

using personification, and metaphors to create the analogy between nature and people,

Wordsworth effectively creates an overall theme of happiness in nature found through

imagination, which makes this a good poem. The theme is created by the lonely poet speaker

laying on his couch imagining himself as a cloud flying across the fields of nature, and finding

happiness and comfort through these visions.

Wordsworth's poem appeals primarily to the sense of sight by using a lot of

imagery. Descriptive imagery runs throughout the poem and begins by detailing the setting.

letting us know that the poet speaker is traveling over vales and hills, stopping beside a lake

underneath trees. Suddenly, Wordsworth mentions that golden daffodils are "Continuous as the

stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way galaxy."(line7-8) The imagery of continuous stars

gives us an impression that there are a whole lot of daffodils in the scene. Wordsworth also

strengthens this idea by adding this line "They stretched in a never-ending line Along the margin

of a bay." (8-9) The poet uses four lines to fully emphasize the amount of daffodils. Using

enjambment, Wordsworth further enhances the "continuous" effect by not allowing the line to

end. He does this twice in lines seven to ten. I believe the use of stars in the galaxy is connected

the idea of how star watching is a lonely activity. This connection helps further express the main

characters loneliness. Imagery is also expressed when waves are personified in lines twelve to

thirteen by comparing the movement of daffodils and waves of the pond creating a sense of

synchronization.

Personification is really what turns this poem alive, with the cloud having human

attributes

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