I certainly agree Wordsworth was a masterful poet, and agree that maybe our modern interpretations are going to be skewed to desire more modern writing conventions - like free-verse and quirky punctuation choices. All poetry of course lives in a context, but so does interpretation.
I also think Wordsworth wouldn't have a problem with us viewing it as a bit "nursery-rhymey" sounding as he himself described this piece as expressing "an elementary feeling" (got that from a Wikipedia quote). And there's nothing inherently wrong with a poem being simple - my point is only that I think the theme would have been easier to grasp if it had been alluded to more in the opening stanza so it could get built up rather than deluded by the nature imagery. On the other-hand, it's altogether possible that Wordsworth wanted us to have search a bit for the meaning and not understand it all within the first reading of it - maybe it's purposefully subtle.
I also think we're all maybe on the same page regarding the structure. To me a sign that it's well done is simply that the rhyming does not feel forced at all, and I mean the flow all seems to work perfectly too. I have no qualms with the structure but just am observing that for me the sound is reminiscent of Nursery Rhymes.
William Wordsworth - "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
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Yeah, you're probably right about that, but I'm pretty sure it was standard practice to read all poems more than once, which might be why he felt comfortable hiding it at the end.
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Thank you @alliyah for showing me this!
I'm sorry if this wasn't the answer the writers of this post was expecting. I think to fully appreciate the naturalist tone of this poem we have to first contextualize it to the era when this was written. That era being the Romantic Era. This era followed the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance Era, the period when people have employed reason and science to everything. Because of this overindulgence in the sciences and the change of pace in their lives, some artists tried to avoid these. What they did was they wrote to escape the highly rational world they now live in, and to do that, they turned to nature. Thus, the Romanticism has been characterized by Escapism and Naturalism.
This brings us back to "I wandered lonely as a cloud." What makes this work very iconic and classical is that it's clear that it's a product of its time. The very meaning of this poem is about escaping to nature in moments of idleness and contemplation.
And that is the reason I like this poem. The escapist theme it carries resonates with me because I feel like I am an escapist myself (it's not as good as it sounds). We could even find a reason to follow this escapist style today. With the plethora of problems plaguing the world, maybe we can turn to nature to forget our problems, even for just a moment. -
@Haraya - I think the escapist theme you're identifying comes through; and agree that the poetic context of the author makes that more apparent - but I'm not sure it is completely necessary in order to find the meaning from the poem.
Good points though!
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