What is the underlying meaning of Wandsworth's poem Daffodils?

It's not for homework or anything, I just don't understand parts of it.

What is the underlying meaning of Wandsworth's poem Daffodils?
I think you mean wordsworth
Reply:Wordsworth loved nature and nearly all of his early (and best) work is natural and descriptive. Look at Tintern Abby for example. Wordsworth's poetry is just painting a picture with words and then explaining how that picture made him feel or why it stuck in his memory.
Reply:I dont see any underlying meaning, he is walking alone and feeling lonely, sees the daffodils, they are waving about, creating a more joyous movement than the sea, and when he is lying on his couch feeling pensive or lonely he recalls their bauty and vivacity and his heart fills with joy.





Thats it basically, no underlying meaning, he wrote it 2 years after he saw a magnificent display of daffodils, and was inspired by another persons writing to write a poem about it.
Reply:The poem is not just about flowers dancing and being merry. In its deeper meaning Daffodils represent simple people (peasants) with their simple needs. People who can take pleasures from everyday life, and who don't have to worry about some great world problems.


Wordsworth usually wrote about such things, being himself enchanted by simplicity and happiness of peasants' life. That's why, towards the end of Daffodils, he wrote that a single memory of those cheerful flowers (i.e. people) gives him pleasure.
Reply:wandsworth is a place and a prison - you mean wordsworth
Reply:in his preface to 'the lyrical ballads' wordsworth wrote that the business of poetry was to preserve 'strong emotion recollected in tranquility'.





in 'the daffodils' wordsworth gives us an example of what he means. wordsworth had a strong and positive emotion when he found a group of daffodils while out walking in the lake district some time before when he writes the poem. ('now oft when on my couch i lie').





by writing the poem wordsworth is able to recapture the feeling and experience the joy all over('they flash upon that inward eye").





for wordsworth poetry was like bottling sunshine.
Reply:I don't think there is one. Personally I can't stand this poem. I think it's trite with weak rhymes and half of it it nonsensical (I mean, when was the last time you saw one cloud on its own?).


Ok, just my opinion, but I still don't think there's any underlying meaning to it.
Reply:Daffodils is early in his career. It's about his wife. He changed it up a little and republished it in 1815.





Daffodils


William Wordsworth





"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."





He can close his eyes and remember this perfect day. Wordsworth is one of my favorites. His work still puzzles scholars and high thinkers. Don't be so hard on it. It's just a patch of flowers.





TD