Wordsworth and Loneliness (Blog #1)

There is something complex about W. Wordsworth's concept of loneliness in his poem "I wandered lonely as a cloud."


In the poem, dated 1807, the narrator, while wandering in a lonely haze, suddenly stumbles upon a vast field of bright yellow daffodils. He refers to this stunning collection of flowers as a "crowd" and takes a moment to observe them as they sway and "dance" in the breeze. "A poet could not but be gay,/In such jocund company," the narrator muses.


Daffodils, rather appropriately, are commonly regarded as flowers symbolic of friendship.


Wordsworth connects with nature when he compares himself to a cloud and the daffodils to dancers. The scene of the daffodils comes back to him whenever he lies on his couch "In vacant or in pensive mood." These flashbacks to the daffodils he refers to as "the bliss of solitude."


This bliss he speaks of is perhaps the comfort of knowing that with nature he is always connected and never really by himself. This idea could be compared with W. Whitman's "I celebrate myself, and sing myself," in which the Whitman declares that "every atom of [his] blood, form'd from this soil, this air," and so every atom belonging to him belongs to everyone and every thing.


If this is true, then both Whitman and Wordsworth are in continual communion with the world and vise versa. The poet is the world, and the world the poet. And is there anything more lonely than that?