Look at that
So "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" has always been one of my favorite Wordsworth poems because of the striking image of Daffodils against a lake dancing and calling to the poet. I wanted to contemplate though why the words Cloud, Vales, Hills, Daffodils, and Poet were capitalized. I can see that Poet and Daffodils can be used as names for those to characters, but why the rest of it. And does Wordsworth have a deeper meaning to this poem aside from the relaxation, beauty, and images he experienced that day in the countryside.
Wordsworth is clearly a romantic. He follows his heart, capitalizing and emphasizing on what he feels. He expresses his joy and I couldn't find a deeper, questioning meaning that would point to a modernist view.
My headline comment pertains to "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" because the teacher in my poetry class has said if the first line and title are the same then cut the first line, but Wordsworth does it here and he is a great poet. Why?
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Aja Hannah on Look at that: Like quotes versus italics. I
Josie Rush on Look at that: Honestly, I assumed when that
Honestly, I assumed when that "rule" was stated, it was more of a preference of the professor than anything else. Poetry, in my humble opinion, has very little in the way of arbitrary rules. There's not much "You have to do this" or "You can never do that." It's why some people love poetry and some people hate it.
Also, and I have no idea here, I'm just speculating, is it possible that Wordsworth just didn't title that particular poem, and when it was published, the first line was simply taken to be the title?
Like quotes versus italics. I hadn't thought of that. A lot of poets hadn't titled their work before they died, but I think Wordsworth was more stable than that. Or maybe he just didn't get around to giving it a title. Or changing the title/first line would mess up the structure of the poem.
yeah, you're right, he probably titled that himself.
maybe it's just something that evolved. like how donne capitalized the first word of every line, but now poets only capitalize when it means something (aside from a new line).