National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, which began the event in 1996. Today, April 7, is the birthday of the great British poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in the Lake District of England. Though he was formally educated and graduated from Cambridge University, his grades were only average. His interest lay more in poetry and the natural world, inspiring him to write, “Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.”

In honor of National Poetry Month and spring, here is one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

I wandered 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,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

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.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid 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:

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.

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” appears in EMC's Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature, Level IV. Wordsworth is also featured in an Author Focus in Mirrors & Windows, The British Tradition, which includes his poems “The World Is Too Much with Us,” “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,” “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” and an excerpt from his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.”
Don’t forget to stop and smell the daffodils!