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Domingo Iribarren Mansur

Mrs. Tubbs

ENGL-1302-118

24 March 2020

Poetic Connection with the Clouds

The poem that I chose to analyze was “I wandered lonely as a cloud” written by William

Wordsworth. This analysis is going to focus on the speaker, and all the aspects that revolve

around the speaker, like tone, wording and punctuation. Another thing that will be analyzed is

the specific phrase “The bliss of solitude” (Wordsworth 485). This poem consists of four stanzas,

and each one of those stanzas consists of six different verses.

This poem explains the things someone saw from the perspective of a cloud, as if the one

reciting the poem was the very same cloud, and almost at the end, in the last stanzas it states that

the speaker is back home in his couch. Based on a first glance, this poem focuses a lot in nature,

putting an emphasis on the field covered with daffodils that was next to a lake. Looking at the

wording that was chosen in many parts of the poem, and already knowing that this poem is

focusing mainly in nature and the beauty that can be found within it, we can feel the different

expressions of wonder and excitement throughout the poem, as if we were seeing things from the

eyes of a curious child, this can be supported by what it says on line thirteen. “The waves beside

them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee” (Wordsworth 485). Something else

that I got out of this poem, is that it is supposed to leave the reader or listener with a desire to go

out into nature more, because at least from my point of view this poem, and specially the tone

that I would personally give to this poem, it is supposed to inspire joy and beauty directed and

associated directly with nature and everything that it encompasses.

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The biggest theme in this poem in my opinion is nature, and the way we as humans

interact with it and the beauty that it gives to this world. Other smaller theme that I saw in maybe

not the most direct way was, the impact that nature has over us as human beings. Pointing at the

idea that even things and creatures with the ability to change entire landscapes, the ability to

create as well as destroy, can be impacted in a very remarkable way by things that at first glance

could be so small and impotent compared with a human, such as a golden colored daffodils. That

is what I thing that what the poem is trying to transmit is that the beauty that nature holds is

something invaluable, something that we all should appreciate more, because as all things in life,

nothing is permanent, eventually someday this beauty will perish and go back to the dust it came

from.

Something that I found interesting in a poem that focused a lot in nature was the phrase,

“bliss of solitude” (Wordsworth 485). The way I interpreted that small phrase was that happiness

or joy that the speaker got from being able to admire the field covered with daffodils and the lake

from so high up in the sky, and the solitude that he refers to was him being all alone in the sky

with no-one else, only him with his thoughts and that beautiful scenery created be nature for us

to praise. So based on the meaning of those to words, and the contexts that I feel best fits the

phrase, I believe that it refers to the enjoyment and happiness the speaker get out of being able to

admire what our world created from dust and ashes from the past, into something that holds a

beauty like no other, from somewhere high above the ground alone, and that part of the phrase in

which mentions the fact that he is by himself, I think that it means that he is alone somewhere

where nothing can get to him, a place that could be said is the speakers safe place, a place that

distances him from everything and everyone that could hurt him, and adding the fact that he

enjoys being able to see nature from a view that for a very long time was only reserved for flying
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creatures, such as birds or bats, I truly believe that the meaning behind this phrase is enjoying

being alone, being happy by yourself. Another thing that I got from those worlds was the felling

of safety and comfort, which goes back to what I said about being alone in the skies was in a way

a safe place for the speaker.

I the fist verse of the first stanza it explicitly states that he is experiencing solitude in the

sky, in the form of a cloud. That loneliness stops being a very important aspect of the poem, but

it still remains in the back. As if the remains of what it was at the very beginning are still

prowling through the poem, but in the moment that he was able to see the green field covered in

gold with a lake as blue as a sapphire, he stopped focusing on his loneliness and all of the

speaker’s attention went directly to the piece of art that was in front of his eyes. The

development that I believe the speaker had, from being lonely into enjoying being alone in the

sky because of the things that he is able to see, makes me feel as if the poem was an actual story

and the speaker was the main character of that story.

In conclusion I feel that this poem had the purpose of making us realize the important of

nature. The way it conveys that message is by expressing everything that the speaker saw with

the excitement and wander that could only be seen though the eyes of a curious child. Something

else I understood through this poem is that we should all go out and admire nature more, because

a lot of us have grown with the bad habit of giving for granted nature as something that was

always there, and there for, will be there for ever. Nothing is permanent, change is inevitable,

and one day change will come, and everything we gave for granted will be reverted into dust and

ashes, back to the earth.

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Reference page

William Wordsworth. “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” The Norton Introduction to Literature.

Kelly J. Mays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. 485.

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