I wandered lonely as a cloud-William Wordsworth

 It’s difficult to say a lot about this poem, other than how much I liked it. It thrives off of simplicity; it’s not a grand, fantastic state of affairs, just a guy having a pleasant interaction with nature in a way that makes him reminisce fondly and feel happy. When you read it, you’re not elbow deep in symbolism or left feeling empty at the end, which is a good, moving experience sometimes, but I do enjoy a happy ending. I think it fits into that sort of ‘sublime experience’ we talked about during class; the man in the poem refers to the memory as something that brings him ‘wealth’, but not in the monetary sense. The wealth he gains is the benefit of a beautiful memory, and the ability to think back on it any time he needs some peace or optimism. I feel like I relate to the experience; I grew up in a very rural town, and with the exception of one neighbor and a few occasional campers, it was basically just my family’s home in the woods. I spent a ton of time as a kid playing outside; during my senior year of high school, I took walks through the woods pretty much every day, and there are places I went that will always stick with me, I think, even if there’s nothing spectacular about them. One is a large, circular clearing in the middle of the woods; there’s always something there, whether it’s wandering deer or the consistent hum of bugs and frogs. I swear there’s something freeing about standing in the middle of that; I always stopped for a few minutes and just waited. Nothing ever happened, but I did it anyway. It’s a good place to go, and remembering that it exists is nice.

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