I wandered lonely as a cloud: Key Poetic Devices

Assonance and Consonance

Assonance and consonance are sibling concepts in that both refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Wordsworth uses both techniques liberally throughout the poem, which brings a sumptuous quality to the language. The opening lines already announce the importance of sound to the poem’s overall effect. Consider, as an example, the repetition of L and O sounds in lines 1–2:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills

The sonic effects here are subtle, yet the combination of L and O sounds has a lulling quality that subtly echoes the speaker’s quiet and melancholy mood. Another brief example that brings assonance and consonance together in an evocative way occurs at the opening of the second stanza (lines 7–8):

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way

The first of these lines features a liquid blending of A, O, and U sounds, as well as sibilant S sounds: “Continuous as the stars that shine.” Then, in the transition to the second line, the vowel I takes over, and N sounds and combinations of K and L come forward: “and twinkle on the milky way.” Note, too, the two Y sounds that conclude the line. Here and elsewhere in the poem, Wordsworth has created an intricate sonic structure that brings lushness to his language.

Pathetic Fallacy

Pathetic fallacy is a term that refers to instances where a poet attributes human-like feelings or actions to natural objects. This term is closely related to personification, which also refers to the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract concepts. However, pathetic fallacy has a narrower application and refers specifically to the personification of elements in a landscape. Wordsworth uses the pathetic fallacy to significant effect in this poem, which centers on the speaker’s encounter with a swath of golden daffodils along a lakeshore. The speaker describes these flowers as “dancing” in the breeze, and he repeatedly refers to the daffodils as engaged in this activity. It could be argued that the references to the daffodils’s dance is little more than a metaphor. However, the speaker’s language in the third stanza explicitly attributes a human-like presence to the flowers (lines 13–16):

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

Here the speaker emphasizes how the daffodils danced with such dexterous ability that they outperformed the movement of the nearby waves. And not only that, the flowers outdid the waves “in glee.” What the speaker perceives as glee positively influences his mood, which then leads him to think of the flowers as “a jocund company”—as if he was all together at a lively dinner party.

Repetition

Throughout the poem, Wordsworth uses different forms of repetition to suggestive effect. Some forms of repetition have mainly local effects. For example, the speaker repeats the word “gazed” twice in quick succession to underscore how enraptured he felt by the dazzling vision of daffodils (lines 17–18):

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

The repetition of “gazed” here emphasizes the primacy of the act of looking. Completely transfixed by the sight of the flowers, the speaker had no room for other thoughts. Yet it is also the intensity of his gaze that allows him to recall the daffodils with great precision later. Another minor example of repetition occurs in lines 23–24, where the recurrence of “and” at the beginning of successive clauses marks a brief moment of anaphora (an-AF-fuh-ruh):

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

However, in contrast to such minor examples of rhetorical flourish, the most significant example of repetition relates to the word dance, a version of which appears in each of the poem’s four stanzas. The recurrence of this word draws extra attention to itself, signaling the enduring significance the dancing daffodils hold for the speaker.

Simile

A simile (SIH-muh-lee) is a figure of speech that explicitly compares two unlike things to each other, usually with a connecting word such as “like” or “as.” Similes figure prominently in Wordsworth’s poem. In fact, the opening lines present one of the most famous similes in English literature:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills

With disarmingly simple language, Wordsworth conjures a powerful image of emotional detachment. The landscape references here may initially suggest an idealization of the natural world. However, the speaker’s figurative identification with the lonely cloud that hovers far above that landscape is decidedly melancholy. Yet this sad disposition shifts when the speaker comes upon a swath of daffodils dancing in the wind along a lakeshore. Here, Wordsworth deploys another simile to signal the shift in the speaker’s emotional state (lines 7–10):

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay

Two points are worth noting here. First, this simile takes up twice as much space as the first one did, suggesting that the speaker’s creative mind has been activated by the encounter with the daffodils. Second, though this simile repeats the first simile’s distinction between the earth and the sky, here the distance between them collapses in a curious way. Previously, the cloud-like speaker felt far removed from the vales and hills below. Here, however, the speaker explicitly likens the daffodils in their “never-ending line” to the continuous band of “stars that shine / and twinkle in the milky way.” Thus, the earth and heavens symbolically merge.

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