| | Classics Network -- Essay -- Wordsworth's Daffodils Reconsidered |
 | | I can imagine that Byron, when writing these lines, had "I wandered lonely as a cloud" in mind, as they point to two essential aspects of "wandering" in that poem: namely physical movement and the heightened state of consciousness that attends such movement. |
 | | If we were to follow Housman's lead and place an ostensibly religious construction on the daffodils in "I wandered lonely", I think we should emphasise their triumphant, perhaps "Pentecostal," aspect in view of the all-pervasive influence of the breeze and the almost flame-like appearance of the flowers. |
 | | Here, it is relevant to consider the basic implication of poetic "wandering” as a quest to reconcile apparently irreconcilable opposites and antitheses, a quest based on the assumption that at a higher level than that at which such opposites appear irreconcilable, harmony and reconciliation can be achieved. |
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