Comments on I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Comments on I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Abstract:The beauty of poem lies in its linguistic features including phonological features, sound effects and figures of speech. This paper is going to analyzing these features in a poem written by Willian Wordsworth—I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. Key words: Willian Wordsworth, phonological, sound effects.
About the author
William Wordsworth ( 1770 – 1850) was was a defining member of the English Romantic Movement, who was called the ―lake poets‖ with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Like other Romantics, his personality and poetry were deeply influenced by his love of nature, especially by the sights and scenes of the Lake Country, in which he spent most of his life. Among his volumes of poetry are Lyrical Ballads (1798), The Prelude (1850) Poem in Two V olumes (1807), and The Excursion(1814).
About the poem
This poem consists of four quatrains, each line being an iambic tetrameter . The poem is about the poet wondering aimlessly beside a lake. When he was in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park, all of a sudden, he saw a large number of golden color daffodils. He enjoyed the glittering dance of the waves. He compared them with innumerable stars shining constantly in the sky. In future whenever the poet lay down either in vacant or thoughtful mood; this beautiful scenery appeared in his mind.
This is simply a superb poem depicting poet's love for nature. It is a lyric poem focusing on the poet’s response to the beaty of nature. The daffodils are full of the poem entirely. The poet appeared as a wanderer in front of the readers. The line, ―Fluttering and dancing in the breeze‖ reveals that the crowd and beautiful daffodils delighted the poet. Meanwhile the world of the daffodils are contrasted sharply with the word of poet: the poet was alone, while the daffodils were countless; the poet was wandering, while the daffodils were “settled”beneath the trees; the poet was lonely, while the daffodils were dancing in the breeze. The world of daffodils are so beautiful, energetic that they have consoled the poet’s loneness. As a consequence, whenever he was roaming in his spirit world, lost in thought, feel lonely, he suddenly becomes excited because of the daffodils. He is deeply impressed by the beauty of nature, and it remains a very good memory to him. Whenever he is in his ―pensive mood‖or being ―vacant‖, the good memory of the daffodils flash back to him as a ―bliss‖ and ―pleasure‖, which releases him out of the loneliness and solitude that he is experiencing
Major theme of the poem
Nature provides an aesthetic experience,and an object for contemplation to help one transcend his common existence.
Sound effect
1. End rhyme
The poem is built of four stanzas (quatrain), each consisting of six lines. The rhyme scheme is ababcc. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.
There are end rhymes as fellow:
1.「aud」cloud crowd
2. 「z」hills daffodils
3.「ain」line shine
4. 「ns」glance dance
5. 「ei」way bay
6.「i」glee company
7. 「t」thought brought 8. 「d」mood solitude
2. Alliteration
In line 2 ―That floats on high o’er vales and hills‖is an example of alliteration with gentle sound of the repeated［h］.
In line 5 ―Beside the lake, beneath the trees‖is also an example of allitetation with sound of the repeated ［b］. Besides the repetition of sounds, the poet also makes his poem a strong appeal for us in language that is rhythmical. He arranges his poem in lines of iambic tetrameter.
3. Types of foot
The meter of this poem is the iambic foot, which is one unstressed syllable plus one stressed syllable. Each line of the poem includes three foots. So the rhythm of this poem is iambic tetrameter.
Figures of speech
1. Simile
Wordsworth, in the poem, also employs figurative language to evoke not only the visual effect but also the emotional reponse. In line 1, the poet makes a comparison between ―I wondered lonely as a cloud‖by the use of simile, thus convey to us his lonely and melancholy mood with the image of ―cloud‖. In line 7, he also anplifies the visal effect by the use of another simile ―Continuous as the stars that shine‖ to evoke our sense of ―daffodils‖with the image of ―stars‖ twinkling on the milky way which is familiar to us all.
2. Overstatement
In line 9 ―They stretched in never-ending line‖, the dance becomes more concrete and vivid. The crowd and beautiful daffodils delighted the poet, the world of the daffodils contrasted sharply with the word of poet: the poet was alone, while the daffodils were countless; the poet was wandering, while the daffodils were always streching; the poet was lonely, while the daffodils were dancing in the breeze and streching in neve r-ending line. In fact, the line reveals that
Conclusion
By brief analysis of the poem ―I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud‖, I have a deeper understanding of the poem and I discover the importance of the application of sound and figures of speech in the poem. When I read a poem or other literary works, we should not only focus on their contents but also on their linguistic features.。