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Each of the poem’s six stanzas follow the same rhyme scheme: ABABCC. This rhyme scheme is unique in the way it combines the otherwise conventional forms of the quatrain and the couplet. The first four lines of every stanza feature an alternating rhyme scheme that creates what the ear hears as a quatrain (ABAB). But instead of continuing with this pattern, the final two lines of each stanza constitute a couplet that introduces a third rhyme (CC). This unique rhyme scheme has a quietly-disruptive effect. Just as the speaker establishes a seemingly consistent pattern, he disrupts that pattern. On a practical level, this strategy prevents the poem from getting too repetitive. It also helps to minimize the sing-song quality inherent in Wordsworth’s use of iambic tetrameter. More symbolically, we could interpret the disruptive rhyme scheme as an echo of the experience described by the speaker. While wandering around in a gray haze of loneliness, the speaker stumbled on a dazzling vision that disrupted his usual habits of seeing. Just as dull repetition gives way to novelty in the speaker’s account of the daffodils, so too does the threat of a boring rhyme pattern give way to new sounds.

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