Wordsworth begins his extended metaphor in the third line of the poem, with his speaker saying, "I saw a crowd, / a host, of golden daffodils" that were "fluttering and dancing in the breeze." (line 6). The speaker is attributing to these daffodils human qualities: their forming a crowd, and their dancing. That the speaker has "wandered lonely as a cloud" (1) introduces the speaker as one content to be apart from other people. The speaker admits that …showed first 75 words of 331 total…

…showed last 75 words of 331 total…it is when "on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood" (19-20). Returned to the industrialized world, the speaker is vacant of the joy he found in nature -- especially the joy he saw in the daffodils. So he recalls the daffodil flowers, "And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the daffodils." (23-24). The speaker is reunited with the pleasure he finds in nature and cannot gain from people.