Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Wordsworth. 17701850530. Daffodils
I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud | |
That floats on high o’er vales and hills, | |
When all at once I saw a crowd, | |
A host, of golden daffodils; | |
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, | 5 |
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. | |
Continuous as the stars that shine | |
And twinkle on the Milky Way, | |
They stretch’d in never-ending line | |
Along the margin of a bay: | 10 |
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, | |
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. | |
The waves beside them danced; but they | |
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: | |
A poet could not but be gay, | 15 |
In such a jocund company: | |
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought | |
What wealth the show to me had brought: | |
For oft, when on my couch I lie | |
In vacant or in pensive mood, | 20 |
They flash upon that inward eye | |
Which is the bliss of solitude; | |
And then my heart with pleasure fills, | |
And dances with the daffodils. |