Composition

For you to better understand the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, it is always a good idea to look at both its outer and inner composition.

Outer composition

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a four-stanza poem, each of the stanzas being comprised of six lines or verses. We call this type of stanza a sextet. Overall, the poem is very simple, using folk language and describing a very common image – that of a group of daffodils.

The rhyme scheme follows the pattern ABABCC. In other words, each stanza has two alternate rhymes and one couplet:

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 dancin...