Fun with ‘Daffodils’
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?
© www.teachit.co.uk 2011
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Fun with ‘Daffodils’
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.
© www.teachit.co.uk 2011
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