Daffodils

William Wordsworth revised “Daffodils” in 1815, adding the important second stanza. This stanza adds a quality of vastness to the daffodils, building on the first stanza’s use of descriptions like “crowd” (Line 3) and “host” (Line 4). The daffodils, the speaker notes, are as “continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle in the milky way” (Lines 7-8). This image suggests that the daffodils exist far beyond where the eye can see, and are layered into space. In Grasmere, their existence on the shore of the bay is finite, but the speaker’s comparisons suggest they are symbolically far more epic, confirmed in the enumeration of “ten thousand” (Line 11) daffodils reaching in a “never-ending line” (Line 9). Further, the image of swaths of flowers compared with stars parallels the key image of the last stanza, the moment when the daffodils “flash upon the inward eye” (Line 21). The idea of the six-pointed petals of the daffodil blooming against the dark space of the imagination is made clearer by the parallel of the bright twinkling stars in the night sky. Wordsworth’s second stanza also enhances the idea that the daffodils can be recollected continuously.