Daffodils by William Wordsworth,read by Jeremy Irons

While “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” matches Wordsworth’s description of poetic process in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, he actually composed the poem some years after the success of that anthology.

In 1802 he spent some time in the English Lake District. On April 15 he  and his sister Dorothy went for a walk near Ullswater lake. In her journal, Dorothy recounts the experience of seeing the daffodils:

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side, we fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore & that the little colony had so sprung up—But as we went along there were more & yet more & at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the Lake to them. There was here & there a little knot & a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity & unity & life of that one busy highway—We rested again & again. (85)