William Wordswoth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud versus The Solitary Reaper

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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and The Solitary Reaper are both written by William Wordsworth and enjoy great popularity among the readers. When reading the two poems, the readers can feel that the tones of them are different. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud affects the readers with the happiness of the daffodils, while The Solitary Reaper transfers a sense of sadness. Apart from the language of the poems and the figures of speech used, the use of sound and stanza also contributes a lot to the creation of different tones. Firstly, the length of each stanza of the two poems has much to do with the creation of the tone. Shorter stanzas are easier to read compared with longer ones. And it is a suitable form to carry such tones as happy, light, and peaceful and so on. On the contrary, longer stanzas always appear denser, and the feelings conveyed are often heavy and sad. Thus, longer stanzas are fit for the expression of sad feelings. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and The Solitary Reaper are two typical examples of this. The former has six lines in each stanza while the latter has eight. When the readers read the two poems, it is easy for them to grasp the happiness of the daffodils as well as the sadness that is conveyed by the ?solitary reaper?. The readers can always quickly finish reading each stanza of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, the same way that the daffodils are ?fluttering and dancing in the breeze? sprightly. Similarly, when reading The Solitary Reaper, the readers cannot help but feel that the many lines of the poem are just like the much sadness that seems to last on and on. And it is difficult for the readers to get out of the sad feeling that the poet has set in the poem. The lengths of the stanzas alone are of great help i... ... middle of paper ... ... varies more. This also contributes to the overall tone of the poem. When reading I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, the readers can easily grasp a sense of happiness, because the sentences, which are neatly written, are more music like and are pleasant to read. However, when reading The Solitary Reaper, with the varying of the lengths of the lines, the readers? feeling cannot help being ?varied? and become quite complicated. The length of each line also helps create the tone of the poems. To sum up, the tone of a poem is not simply connected with the meaning of each line, in other words, even though the readers don?t quite get the meaning of one poem, they can still know the tone of it. Because the basic elements, such as sound and stanza also play very important roles in the poem. Compared with the words of a poem, they are the muted messengers of the beauty of poem.

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