PLEASE HELP Analysis of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was a Romantic poet. The Romantics began to write in the late 1700s. Before that, in the early 1700s or Classical period, poetry was judged to some degree on how well the poet adhered to the rules. The poets in the Romantic period objected to strictly following the rules. Instead of focusing on order, tradition, and authority, romantics preferred wildness, rebellion, and ego. Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” conveys many of these Romantic values through the use of rhythm, rhyme, diction (word choice), figurative language (metaphors), and tone. Let’s look first at the rhythm of the poem. The opening line sets the meter: I WAN/dered LONE/ly AS a CLOUD This pattern suggests movement, which is what the poem is about. Poets choose their structures for a reason. This poem is an example of form following function. In other words, Wordsworth selected the form based on what he was trying to say. In poetry, even the sound and shape of the poem (for example, how long the lines are) has something to do with the poem’s meaning. The rhyme scheme is a pattern commonly found in a dance, and this poem is about dancing. Now let’s look at Wordsworth’s diction, because he chose each word carefully and purposefully. Note the verbs in the first stanza—wandered, floats, fluttering, and dancing. They all suggest looseness, wildness, and freedom. The adjectives contribute to this feeling as well: golden, sprightly, and sparkling. The nouns throughout the poem are almost entirely references to nature: cloud, daffodils, trees, breeze, stars, bay, and waves. A stanza is a group of lines that form the basic recurring metrical unit of a poem. Stanzas also help organize a poem, just as paragraphs help organize prose. Each stanza may represent a self-contained idea, or it may provide a different thought, perspective, or tone on an idea from another stanza. When you consider all of these technical elements together, you can draw some conclusions befo