Verse > Anthologies > Harvard Classics > English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald
  PREVIOUS NEXT  
CONTENTS · BOOK CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
   English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics.  1909–14.
 
377. The Daffodils
 
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
 
 
I WANDER’D 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        5
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
 
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:        10
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        15
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,        20
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 

CONTENTS · BOOK CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
  PREVIOUS NEXT  
 

Shakespeare · Bible · Strunk · Anatomy · Nonfiction · Quotations · Reference · Fiction · Poetry
© 1993–2020 Bartleby.com · [Top 150] · Subjects · Titles · Authors · World Lit · Free Essays