Wordsworth's Daffodils

William Wordsworth is thought to have written his daffodil poem after being inspired by a journal entry his sister Dorothy had made of their visit to the Lakes in 1802.   Certainly  the sight of Daffodils in the Lake District conjures up, for most of us, the first lines of his famous poem 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'. The poem was penned in 1804 and eventually published in 1807

Born in the small Cumbrian town of Cockermouth. Wordsworth later went to school in Hawkshead, a table there still bears his inscription, before going on to study at Cambridge. 

William Wordsworth's Daffodil Poem
read by
Jeremy Irons 


A visit to Dove Cottage is a must to find out more about this Romantic Poet who experienced the French Revolution during his travels through Europe and who fell in love with Annette Vallon with whom he had a daughter, prior to eventually settling down on the outskirts of the beautiful village of Grasmere and his eventual marriage to Mary Hutchinson, with whom he would have a further five children.

Having been parted from his sister after their mother died they were reunited in their teens and spent the rest of their lives living closely (read more about their relationship and genetic attraction here. The brother and sister duo were very friendly with Coleridge and Southey in addition to many other noted writers of the time and settled in Grasmere, earning them the collective title of The Lakes Poets, locally. More information on the talented Wordsworth's can be found here


I wandered lonely as cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

and twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

in such a jocund company:

I gazed - and gazed - but little thought

what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.