Fun with ‘Daffodils’

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Ten ways of looking at ‘Daffodils’

Daffodils

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. William Wordsworth

1. Rewrite it as prose – How many changes do you have to make for it to sound like prose? Read

this version of the first verse then have a go at the rest.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats high over the vales and hills, when I saw a crowd of golden daffodils. They were beside the lake and beneath the trees – and they were fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” (Do you need to change ‘breeze’ to ‘light wind’ to get rid of the rhyme? Try it and see.)

2. Decide what you can say, factually, about the daffodils, or what the poet observed.

3. Close your eyes and guess how many adjectives he uses to describe the daffodils. Now look at the poem and try to decide how many there are. There might be some discussion about this. Are you surprised by the amount of adjectives he uses? Why?

Fun with ‘Daffodils’

© www.teachit.co.uk 2011 15133 Page 2 of 2

4. He doesn’t actually say very much about the flowers themselves so what does he say? There were many of them. They stretched a long way …

5. Close your eyes again and try to remember which other natural things he mentions. Again, does this surprise you at all?

6. There’s a lot of personification going on here. What human characteristics do non-human things

have? How effective do you find these descriptions? Can you come up with alternative characteristics which you find more appropriate?

7. Read the poem backwards. Does any of it still make sense?

8. There’s a certain amount of repetition. Can you find examples of where something is said more

than once? What is the effect of this?

9. Reflection. The last verse is different to the others it deals with the poet reflecting on a happy time. Write down some of your reflections about a happy time – it does not have to be a poem but could be developed into one later.

10. Your way. Find a picture of a spring flower or, even better, a flower itself. It would be really great if you could get the chance to see a whole ‘host’ of flowers growing outside to get a sense of what Wordsworth wrote about.

Make notes and then use them to write your own poem about a type of flower. To inspire you, here is Trevor Millum’s way of looking at spring flowers.

It’s March – and I could write of daffodils But that’s been done before, and hellebore (With their modest faces turned away) or Violets - don’t possess the visual thrills Or smells to stop us in our daily tracks; The snowdrops now are faded: their tiny cups Upturned, a little stained, need washing up – And primrose lack the punch that roses pack. But from a terracotta pot, in shade By the back door, a colour grabs our eyes: A blue of all the bluest summer skies And intoxicating perfume invades Our waiting – so long starved of scent – nostrils: So hyacinths outdo those daffodils.