Kubla Khan

William Wordsworth was a Romantic poet and a major influence in bringing about the 18th centuries’ Romantic Age of Literature. He revolutionized an era full of emotions, imagination and creativity which contradicted with the previous Enlightment period. The major characteristics of the Romantic period are love of nature, imagination, creativity, transcendentalism, simplicity, emotions, freedom of expression, solitude and loneliness. A lyrical poem written by Wordsworth in 1804 and published in 1815 in 'Collected Poems' with four stanzas is the Daffodils. The Daffodils reflects most of the era's characteristics which assures Wordsworths' ideas and beliefs.
          William Wordsworth starts his poem with " I wandered lonely as a cloud".
From the very first line, 3 aspects of the Romantic period is mentioned which are subjectivity, loneliness and love of nature. The Romantic era stressed on the freedom of expression where the poet states his own experience mainly with nature. Here, The field of daffodils is evidently the subject of this poem, making nature the most apparent feature throughout. In the first stanza, Wordsworth mentions some natural aspects like vales, hills, and daffodils. He says : "A host, of golden daffodils/
Beside the lake, beneath the trees/ Fluttering and dancing in the breeze". These lines reflect how nature has harmony within itself. However, the daffodils by itself is not the main subject of the poem. Wordsworth, as previously mentioned, had revolutionized a new era full of feelings, emotions and freedom of expression. He stresses here that it's a give and take process. The man takes beauty and gives imagination and poetry. He says: "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". These lines also stress on his definition of poetry which is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. The poet shouldn't write poetry during...