Close Reading:

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

            With his impressive word choice and descriptions, William Wordsworth puts incredible imagery into his poem “The Daffodils.” This poem is a prime example of nice rhythm and rhyme scheme. The breaks and length of the stanzas also add to the effectiveness of the poem. Wordsworth uses all of these techniques to bring the reader into a complacent state and put their mind exactly where his is; dancing with the daffodils.

            The first thing to notice about “The Daffodils” is the rhythm and flow that Wordsworth uses. His A-B-A-B-C-C pattern leaves no room for the readers mind not to be hooked to the poem. Every single line connects a previous line, unlike some poetry which does not pair every single line with a rhyming one. This poem sounds almost like a lullaby, lulling the reader to a meditative, sleepy state. We’re automatically drawn to each descriptive line as it flows together with another, painting a picture in our minds of, simply, daffodils.

            Though it may seem like the breaks in the poem are the way they are simply to make every stanza identical, they actually serve a greater purpose than just that. Ending each stanza with a couplet puts a finishing touch on what acts like a scene in the stanza. It closes the scene for the reader so that they may gather the image they’ve just been described into their heads, process it, and, once they’ve got it perfectly pictured, move onto the next “scene,” or lines. This adds to the lullaby effect that the poem has because it is seems to be telling a story to the reader, while using it’s rhythm to relax us into contemplation.

            Wordsworth takes three out of four stanzas to describe the scene of the daffodils. He does it such specific imagery that one can not help but see exactly the scene he is trying to depict. He begins the poem with a notion that is unrealistic. Though his metaphor of wandering “lonely as a cloud” (Wordsworth, ln. 1) is just that, a metaphor, it makes the reader feel as though they are floating high above the scene, looking down upon the thousands of daffodils below. With this notion of impossibility implanted in our minds, we go through the rest of the poem feeling as though the narrator is in a dreaming state, surrounded by beauty that that can’t be scene anywhere but where things aren’t real. Wordsworth says “A poet could not be but gay” (Wordsworth, ln. 15). By this, he is emphasizing the beauty of the scenery. A poets job is to take things, beautiful or ugly, and put them into the most accurate description they possibly can. It is scenes like this one that make his job worth while, as he is able to take in the daffodils and write about them so happily.

            As a talented poet, Wordsworth knows better than to leave a reader with just a perfectly described image. He must leave them with something to contemplate and challenge their mind. Few good poems are simply descriptions of something beautiful. To push this poem further, he uses the first lines of the last stanza to suck the reader back to reality, reminding us that this scene is only meant to be thought of, in our minds, and rarely experienced in reality, because people such as himself so often simply lie on the couch, thinking.

            But Wordsworth does leave us with some hope; that even in such a lonely state as lying on the couch, lazily, the mind is able to wander off, and is made happy again simply by thinking of the daffodils.