Personification In Daffodils

Compare the way nature is presented in ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth and ‘Nettles’ by Vernon Scannell.

With the two poets having rather significantly different backgrounds, the difference in presentation of the poems become evident. William Wordsworth was a very romantic poet and he looked to find the nice things and beauty of the world and nature and he used this to inspire his poetry. He wrote Desideria and Evening on Calais Beach but is most famous for his poem I wondered lonely as a cloud, more commonly known as Daffodils. Contrastingly, Vernon Scannell was a soldier who fought in World War 2 where he was injured and has recently been revealed as a “wife-beating drunk and serial deserter” according to the independent newspaper. These contrasting personalities are shown throughout their works. Daffodils …show more content…
One example within ‘Daffodils’ is the personification of the clouds, with one of them being labelled as “lonely”. A cloud could not possibly be lonely, so it gives the reader the impression that the narrator has been confined to a solitary sentence even though he longs to be accepted into society and into a group. Many however argue that the most important example of personification within ‘Daffodils’ is “tossing their heads in sprightly dance”. This is significant due to the word “sprightly”. “Sprightly” is an adjective meaning to be full of spirit and vitality. This further enhances the reader’s view that the daffodils are actually metaphors for people and that instead of stumbling upon a field of daffodils, he has stumbled up a group of friends. On the other hand the nettles are personified as an opposing force. They are described as a "regiment of spite", and are described using the metaphor “spears". Within the first three lines of the poem, the nettles are presented as a militant group of soldiers to highlight and justify their destruction in the aim of protecting his son from repeat