Friday, December 26, 2014

How can I paraphrase or summarize Wordsworth's "Daffodils" along with the figures of speech and the sound devices he used?

In this poem, often called "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," the narrator is walking in the Lake District of England one spring day when he sees a large mass of daffodils—"ten thousand"—waving in the breeze beside a lake. They are so beautiful and seem so happy that the narrator's spirits lift and he feels happy too and no longer lonely: "A poet could not but be gay / in such jocund [joyful, laughing] company." Watching them simply makes him feel joyful. He feels very wealthy as well to have been given the gift of seeing these daffodils waving by a sparkling lake. In the last stanza, he remembers the waving daffodils bringing joy to him again and again as he, for example, lies on his couch at home. If he is feeling a little depressed (what he calls a "pensive" mood), the daffodils will appear to his "inner eye" (his memory) and he will feel "pleasure" once more. The daffodils are a gift that keeps on giving because he can remember them.

Wordsworth uses figures of speech that personify the daffodils, which means he describes them as being like people. For example, he describes them "tossing their heads in a sprightly dance." In other words, rather than simply seeing them as flowers blown by a breeze, he sees them as a big mass of dancing, happy people. He also uses the device of simile, likening the unbroken line of daffodils to "stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way."


As for sound devices, Wordsworth creates a musical, rhythmic quality in his use of a simple a/b, a/b rhyme scheme with each stanza ending in rhyming couplets which bring a musical sense of closure, or what is called a closed cadence. For example, in stanza three we have "they/gay," "glee/company," and finally, "thought/brought." This stanza also slows down the quick, dancing musicality of the lines at a crucial point, using dashes and repetition to show that the poet stopped for a time and "gazed—and gazed—." The poem seems light and simple, but as we unpack it we see how carefully it is constructed to achieve its lighthearted effect.

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