William Wordsworth’s well-known poem, I wandered Lonely as a Cloud, was inspired by the sight of daffodils by the shoreline of Ullswater. The poem was written between 1804 and 1807, but he saw the daffodils 2 years before he started the poem. He was not in fact wandering alone, but was walking with his sister, Dorothy, having visited their friends, The Clarksons, who lived at Eusemere, Pooley Bridge. Dorothy recorded the sighting in her diary for 15 April, 1802:

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and 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 and above them ; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.

There is little doubt that Wordsworth used his sister’s journal entry when he later wrote the Daffodils poem, borrowing the notion that they were dancing. The 1807 version also spoke of “laughing company”, reflecting Dorothy’s language. He later changed this to “jocund company” in the 1815 version.

In his preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth wrote that “Poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. The Daffodils poem illustrates what he meant. Writing well after the event, Dorothy’s journal allowed him to remember and reflect upon the emotions felt on the day he saw the flowers. The poem itself speaks of memory and how a picture of the daffodils would come to him while resting:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The middle two lines of this stanza, which Wordsworth considered to be the best, he credited to his wife, Mary. It is an interesting example of how the Wordsworths worked together, the women transcribing his manuscripts, but also it seems contributing to the ideas and language of the poetry.<