Symbol Analysis
"I wandered lonely as a Cloud" has the remote, otherworldly atmosphere that is suggested by the title. The speaker feels like a cloud, distant and separated from the world below. But this distance becomes a good thing when he comes upon the daffodils, which are like little stars. It’s as if the problem at the beginning is that he hasn’t ascended high enough.
- Lines 1-2: The beginning of the poem makes a simile between the speaker’s wandering and the "lonely" distant movements of a single cloud. Clouds can’t be lonely, so we have another example of personification.
- Lines 7-8: The second stanza begins with a simile comparing the shape and number of the daffodils to the band of stars that we call the Milky Way galaxy.