William Wordsworth Poem: "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud."

Wordsworth begins his extended metaphor in the third line of the poem, with his speaker saying, "I saw a crowd, / a host, of golden daffodils" that were "fluttering and dancing in the breeze." (line 6). The speaker is attributing to these daffodils human qualities: their forming a crowd, and their dancing. That the speaker has "wandered lonely as a cloud" (1) introduces the speaker as one content to be apart from other people. The speaker admits that …

…it is when "on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood" (19-20). Returned to the industrialized world, the speaker is vacant of the joy he found in nature -- especially the joy he saw in the daffodils. So he recalls the daffodil flowers, "And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the daffodils." (23-24). The speaker is reunited with the pleasure he finds in nature and cannot gain from people.