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The Full Text of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
1I wandered lonely as a cloud
2That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
3When all at once I saw a crowd,
4A host, of golden daffodils;
5Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
6Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
7Continuous as the stars that shine
8And twinkle on the milky way,
9They stretched in never-ending line
10Along the margin of a bay:
11Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
12Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
13The waves beside them danced; but they
14Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
15A poet could not but be gay,
16In such a jocund company:
17I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
18What wealth the show to me had brought:
19For oft, when on my couch I lie
20In vacant or in pensive mood,
21They flash upon that inward eye
22Which is the bliss of solitude;
23And then my heart with pleasure fills,
24And dances with the daffodils.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Introduction
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"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is one of the most famous and best-loved poems written in the English language. It was composed by Romantic poet William Wordsworth around 1804, though he subsequently revised it—the final and most familiar version of the poem was published in 1815. The poem is based on one of Wordsworth's own walks in the countryside of England's Lake District. During this walk, he and his sister encountered a long strip of daffodils. In the poem, these daffodils have a long-lasting effect on the speaker, firstly in the immediate impression they make and secondly in the way that the image of them comes back to the speaker's mind later on. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is a quintessentially Romantic poem, bringing together key ideas about imagination, humanity and the natural world.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Summary
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The speaker walks alone, similar to a solitary cloud in the sky floating over hills and valleys. Suddenly, the speaker sees a long and bustling row of daffodils. They are near the lake and the trees and flutter and shift as they are blown by the breeze.
Comparing the daffodils to stars in the sky, the speaker notes how the flowers seem to go on without ending, alongside a bay. The speaker guesses there are ten thousand or so daffodils, all of their heads moving as if they were dancing.
Near the daffodils, the waves are glinting on the bay. But the daffodils seem more joyful to the speaker than the waves. A poet couldn't help being cheerful, says the speaker, in the cheerful company of the daffodils. The speaker stares at the daffodils lingeringly, without yet realizing the full extent of the positive effects of encountering them.
After the experience with the daffodils, the speaker often lies on the couch, either absent-minded or thoughtful. It is then that the daffodils come back to the speaker's imaginative memory—access to which is a gift of solitude—and fills the speaker with joy as his mind dances with the daffodils.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Themes
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Nature and Humanity
Considered one of the most significant examples of Romantic poetry, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” explores the relationship between nature and humanity. In doing so, it makes two key points. Firstly, it argues that humanity is not separate from nature, but rather part of it. And secondly, it suggests that the natural world—and a strong bond with it—is essential to human happiness. Though the reader might be fooled by the suggestion of solitude in the title, this is an optimistic poem with a positive outlook on the world. This happiness is drawn from the speaker’s interaction with nature, in turn encouraging the reader to appreciate the natural majesty that is all around them.
The poem introduces the idea of loneliness in the first line, but the speaker is not really alone at all. The speaker is in the presence of “a host of golden daffodils,” whose delicate “dancing” in the wind has a long-lasting effect on the speaker’s mind. This set-up introduces a sense of togetherness between humanity (represented by the speaker) and nature (represented by the daffodils). And though this togetherness is partly rendered by the personification of the daffodils that runs throughout the poem—they are “dancing” in every stanza—the speaker pre-emptively flips this personification on its head in the very first line. Here, the speaker compares himself to a natural element: a cloud. So, the human component of the poem is like nature, and the natural component is like humanity. They are, in a word, together.
The poem suggests that this togetherness is something instinctive, and sometimes obvious only in hindsight. It’s clear that the beauty of the daffodils had an instant impact on the speaker—which is why the speaker “gazed and gazed”—but it was only later, when the experience “flashed” again in the speaker's mind, that the speaker realized its full significance. In this quiet moment, the speaker draws on the experience of the daffodils as an avenue to happiness. That is, everything that the daffodils represent—joy, playfulness, survival, beauty—"fills” the speaker with “bliss” and “pleasure.” In the speaker’s mind, the speaker is again dancing “with the daffodils.” The poem, then, is arguing that communion with nature is not just a momentary joy, but something deeper and long-lasting. The reader is left with the distinct impression that, without these types of experiences with nature, the speaker would be returned to a genuine loneliness only hinted at by the title.
Stanzas 2 and 3 also make it clear to the reader that the togetherness described above is, of course, not solely about daffodils, but rather about nature more generally. “The stars” and “the sparkling waves” are both mentioned, suggesting a series of links between the smaller, less noticeable elements of the natural world (like the daffodils), humankind (like the speaker), and the wider universe (the stars). All are presented as a part of nature; though they are different, they are all in communion with one another. However, people have to make an effort to notice this and to engage with the natural world like the speaker does. The poem, then, is an argument for active engagement with nature—a message perhaps even more important now than it was at the time, given humanity’s wide-ranging effects on the planet it inhabits.
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Memory and Imagination
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” argues for a strong connection between experience, imagination, and language. The poem itself is a memory, focused on bringing the speaker's experience of seeing daffodils back to life on the page through the concentrated power of the imagination. Like nature, the imagination was an integral part of the poetic universe of the Romantics, and in this poem, the speaker shows the way in which a strong imagination—using the “inward eye” of the mind—can bring back pleasant memories, create joy in the present, and even pass joy along to others.
The poem is told retrospectively, with all the verbs up until the final stanza in the past tense: the speaker is looking back on an experience from the past. It is, then, an effort on the speaker’s part not just to recall an experience, but to breathe new life into it through the imagination. The speaker doesn’t only want to acknowledge the experience, but somehow give it life again and, in turn, conjure that same joyful feeling.
The success of this goal depends on the speaker and the reader working together. The speaker strives to bring their experience with the daffodils into life on the page, and the reader is asked to use their imagination to make this work. The reader, then, is called on to use their own “inward eye,” just as the speaker describes in the final stanza. Primarily, this interplay between the speaker's imagination and the reader's imagination is dependent on the personification of the daffodils that runs throughout the poem. The speaker describes the daffodils as having human characteristics, which are not meant to be taken literally but instead imaginatively. For example, the “dancing” of the daffodils, referenced in every stanza, is actually just the effect of the wind. But dancing, of course, is an inherently joyful activity. The speaker perceives visual similarities between the daffodils’ movement and dance, and this imaginative leap deepens the speaker's own connection to the experience. In essence, imagining the daffodils are dancing makes the speaker feel more alive by witnessing the life in everything else.
The speaker also projects human emotion onto the daffodils: “jocund company” (jocund means cheerful). Of course, the daffodils don’t experience the world in this way—the speaker is seeing their own state of mind reflected back in the visual effect of the flowers. That imaginative leap heightens the experience, arguably making the speaker feel a stronger connection to nature. The poem in turn asks the reader to go through the same process. The reason for doing so is clear from the final stanza. Here, the speaker describes being in a “vacant” or “pensive” mood— in other words, these are times in which the speaker feels disengaged and detached from the world. Of course, the imagination is the speaker's salvation—the image of the daffodils comes rushing back, and even further, the speaker imaginatively goes back to the daffodils and “dances” with them. The poem, then, argues that such imaginative acts can have positive effects for the reader, too. Encouraging the reader toward imagination becomes the justification for the use of personification, conceptualization, and poetic language that has come before. These choices weren't just about describing the daffodils, but about engaging the reader’s imagination in experiencing them. Throughout, the speaker links imagination to happiness, particularly in its capacity to bring memories, if not back to life, into new life. The experience of the daffodils lives on in the speaker’s and then the reader’s imagination. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is, then, an imaginative attempt to not just recreate the speaker's experience, but to extend it into the mind of the reader. The poem argues that this process is an important part of what it means to be human and, moreover, happy.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
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Lines 1-2
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,The poem begins by establishing a sense of isolation—the set-up that the visual shock of the daffodils will later break through. Whereas the rest of the poem functions through personifying nature, the first line actually does the reverse. The speaker likens themselves—or specifically, their "lonely" way of wandering—to a cloud. The effect of this simile is similar to that of the later personification of the daffodils: both serve to link the speaker and nature together. The speaker is a stand-in for humanity more generally, so this first line establishes that the poem is about the relationship between mankind and the natural world. The comparison suggests that the speaker is walking about without any particular purpose, building on the idea that clouds are aimless (which in itself is a kind of built-in personification that often occurs when people look up at the sky).
The language of the first line is delicate and simple, establishing a sense of calm that is disrupted by the ecstatic joy of the daffodils' sudden appearance. The iambic tetrameter suggests a steady but not urgent walking pace, and the consonance of /l/ sounds links "lonely" and "cloud" together, reinforcing the idea of clouds as somehow isolated figures (of course, this is very weather-dependent!).
The second line continues this airiness, with the enjambment at the end of line 1 allowing the two lines together to breathe easily. The /l/ sounds are picked up again in "floats," "vales," and "hills," but as this is a gentle sound, it only serves to underscore the calm atmosphere of the opening. This is, of course, a short lull that is soon to be interrupted.
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Lines 3-6
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
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Lines 7-12
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. -
Lines 13-18
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:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought: -
Lines 19-24
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Symbols
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Daffodils
It's obvious who the stars of the show in this poem are—the daffodils. The whole poem revolves around them, and any other images in the text are only there to support the overall impression of the daffodils.
The first aspect of the daffodils' symbolism exists outside any associations made in the poem. In the United Kingdom, the blooming of daffodils traditionally symbolizes the arrival of spring. So the daffodils in Wordsworth's poem already act as heralds of renewal, rebirth and new beginnings even before the poem adds its own associations or meanings to the flowers.
In "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," the daffodils also represent nature's incredible capacity for beauty, and its ability to manifest that beauty in subtle and innovative ways. Accordingly, this symbolism drives part of the poem's implicit argument that people should take more notice of nature—that they should take their time, look more closely, and marvel at the natural world's incredible variety of forms.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
Personification is so prominent within "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" that it can almost be considered the poem's "mode." This device mainly functions by ascribing human emotions to the natural world. This is not a one-way exchange, however—it is part of an overall argument for a closer relationship between humanity and nature. In seeing elements of itself in nature, humanity can see itself as part of nature.
Three different aspects of nature are personified in the poem. The first personification occurs in the first line. It's subtle, because it's wrapped up in the speaker comparing themselves to a cloud—which is, in fact, the reverse of personification. But the speaker characterizes their "wandering" as "lonely," and specifically akin to the loneliness of "a cloud." In reality, loneliness is a human emotion and, of course, not one felt by clouds. This personification helps to link the human speaker with the natural environment in which they walk.
The main personification applies to the daffodils. They are described as a "crowd" and a "host" (the latter of which also has the subtle connotation of relating to angels), and on three occasions they are said to be "dancing." Dance is particularly important—people dance as an expression of joy, and/or as a method of togetherness. Dance has also played a key role in human history as a ritualistic expression of spirituality. As the poem is about joy, togetherness with nature, and a spiritual way of seeing humankind's place in nature, the projection of dancing movement onto the daffodils reinforces all of these ideas.
The third personification is in line 13, when the waves are also described as dancing. Here, there is a sense that the speaker is perceiving nature in motion, and though the daffodils "outdo" the waves in joyfulness, the overall effect is that the entire scene contains an essence fundamental to human happiness.
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Simile
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Alliteration
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Caesura
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Enjambment
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Sibilance
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Polysyndeton
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Hyperbole
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- o'er
- vales
- host
- daffodils
- sprightly
- glee
- gay
- jocund
- oft
- vacant
- inward eye
o'er-
A contraction of "over."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
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Form
The form of "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is relatively simple. The poem consists of four sestets (six-line stanzas), adding up to twenty-four lines in total. It is told in the past tense up until the final stanza, which means that the reader imaginatively participates in the speaker's memory as the speaker reconstructs it. For example, just as the daffodils appeared suddenly to the speaker, they also enter suddenly in line 4. Lines 3 till halfway through line 17 all develop the description of the daffodils, emphasizing their human-like dancing, their visual beauty, and their abundance.
Line 17 marks the main shift in the poem—when the speaker introduces a wider context as to why they feel the experience of the daffodils is important. The colon at the end of line 18—and this is the only stanza with an end like this—indicates that the fourth stanza will explain the nature of the "wealth" the speaker feels the daffodils have provided.
The final stanza, then, makes the poem's purpose clear. The speaker feels the rewards of the experience with the daffodils as an on-going process. The memory, brought to life by "solitude," brings back the daffodils to the speaker's imagination and fills the speaker with happiness. Solitude and the imagination, then, are shown to allow people access to a particular type of joy that is linked to experiences in the natural world.
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Meter
The meter in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is consistently iambic tetrameter, with a few careful and deliberate exceptions. Generally, the iambic tetrameter has an almost walking pace in line with the poem's main set-up: the speaker "wandering" in the countryside. The lines are mostly even and measured, similar to purposeful but unhurried footsteps.
The first variation of the iambic tetrameter occurs in line 6, in which the first foot is substituted for a dactyl:
Flut-ter-ing | and dan- | -cing in | the breeze
This change emphasizes the movement contained in the word "fluttering," making it sudden. Likewise, the three syllables in the first foot have an almost waltz-like feel, anticipating the use of "dancing" throughout the poem.
Line 7 provides the next disruption of the meter, with an extra syllable in "continuous" making the line literally longer, which mimics the long line of daffodils.
Line 12 has a trochee substituted in the first foot, serving a very similar function to the earlier substitution in line 6 and making the meter of the mirror the motion of the daffodils.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme follows a clear formula throughout the poem. Each stanza follows its own ABABCC scheme:
- Stanza 1: ABABCC
- Stanza 2: ABABCC
- Stanza 3: ABABCC
- Stanza 4: ABABCC
In each stanza, then, there is a concluding final couplet. The rhymes are strong and full throughout, which in part demonstrates the imaginative power of the speaker but also embodies the idea of "dance" that runs through the poem. The strictness of the pattern is like a sequence of dance moves, with just enough variation to keep it interesting.
In the first stanza, all of the end words relate to nature—though "crowd" is part of the speaker's personification of the daffodils. This helps to establish the outdoor setting of the poem and makes it clear that the natural world is a key part of the poem's meaning.
Similarly, the first four end words in the final stanza all help to establish the speaker's sense of solitude (though now indoors). This solitude isn't portrayed negatively, but rather as part of the imaginative process. The rhymes, then, help the reader sense the shift in mood as the poem moves from relaying the memory of the daffodils to showing why that memory is important. Fittingly, the last couplet allows for the poem to end on the star of the show—the daffodils themselves.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Speaker
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The poem is spoken in the first-person throughout, and indeed deals with the speaker's own memory. The speaker has selected this memory as significant, and it is up to the poem to justify why. The poem begins and ends with the speaker alone—"lonely" in line 1 and "solitude" in line 22. But this isn't meant to be perceived negatively. In fact, the speaker's initial isolation is part of what allows them to be so attentive to nature, and the solitude in the end is actually a state of "bliss." Part of the poem's argument, then, is about the importance of a certain type of solo contemplation.
The first-person pronoun is used in every stanza, emphasizing that this is a poem that hinges on personal experience. That choice isn't to exclude the reader, but rather to encourage them to engage with the natural world and the imagination in the same way the speaker does.
The speaker is also a poet, and so it's fair to interpret the poem as being Wordsworth's own thoughts, though the poem itself does not state this explicitly. Indeed, the daffodils encounter is well-documented as having happened on a walk he shared with his sister in England's Lake District. Likewise, the final stanza, which explains why the daffodils are so important, closely aligns with the poetic philosophy set out by Wordsworth elsewhere (in his Lyrical Ballads). The speaker/Wordsworth believes that solitude is integral to the imagination, and that imaginative contemplation is essential to what it means to be human.
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“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Setting
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The poem is, on the one hand, set outdoors in the countryside. It's well-documented that the poem was inspired by one of Wordsworth's walks in England's Lake District, but the text of the poem doesn't state that explicitly. Accordingly, the poem's outdoors doesn't have to be limited to the specific place that gave Wordsworth the idea. The reader gets a clear sense that the countryside scene is well away from any other sign of humanity—hence the speaker's isolation—and is in a landscape with "vales and hills." Likewise, it is a pleasant climate and is early spring. Daffodils, in fact, are often the herald of spring in places like England, and their sudden shock of yellow is a remarkable sight.
On the other hand, the poem's setting is also the speaker's psyche, what the speaker describes as an "inward eye." The poem is told in the first-person past tense until the final stanza, which situates the reader within the speaker's memory. This figurative setting is clarified at the end when the speaker discusses the merits of this kind of imaginative memory which, the reader now understands, they have been witnessing at work and even participating in.
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Literary and Historical Context of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Literary Context
William Wordsworth is one of the most recognizable names in English poetry and was a key figure of the Romantic poets. Generally speaking, key principles of Romanticism were a close relationship with nature, an emphasis on the importance of the imagination, solitude and contemplation, and the significance of emotion. These tenets were a reaction against certain ideals of the Enlightenment, principally reason, over-intellectualization, and spiritual confinement.
This poem, in fact, neatly encapsulates Wordsworth's poetic philosophy, which he describes in the Lyrical Ballads (a key Romantic text published with Samuel Coleridge in 1798): "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." The Romantic label generally groups Wordsworth together with poets Samuel Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Blake, Lord Byron and Thomas de Quincey. As with many such terms, it was coined by critics after these writers' lives and masks significant differences between some of them. Essayists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau also wrote on similar Romantic themes, and Rousseau in particular emphasized the natural world in the same way that Wordsworth does here.
Wordsworth was one of England's most popular poets throughout his lifetime, and he became Poet Laureate in 1843.
Historical Context
The poem was begun in 1804, but the particular walk that it is based on took place in 1802. There are two key events important to the context here. The first is the French Revolution in 1789 which, though of course it took place in France, had a strong effect on the intellectual and ideological atmosphere of early 19th-century England. Its purported ideals of liberty, brotherhood and equality were considered noble ambitions, and Wordsworth supported them initially. He and Coleridge were even at one point suspected of being French spies.
The second piece of key historical context is less an event than a gradual but sweeping change that came over much of Europe from about the 1760s onwards—the Industrial Revolution. This period saw a rapid increase in mechanized labor, pollution, and population density, which in part informed the Romantic emphasis on people somehow returning to, or communing with, the natural environment. This poem, of course, is a clear example of that emphasis.
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More “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Resources
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External Resources
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A Reading — The poem read by Jeremy Irons.
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Daffodils at Ullswater — Photos and video of daffodils at the actual location mentioned in Wordsworth's account of the walk.
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Nature and Wordsworth — A short BBC clip about Wordsworth's early relationship with nature.
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Biography and other poems — A useful resource from TPoetry Foundation.
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Preface to Lyrical Ballads — The preface to Coleridge and Wordsworth's 1798 book, Lyrical Ballads.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Wordsworth
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