The Solitary Reaper

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth (1807)

Arguably Wordsworth’s most famous lyric poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” appears in the same 1807 collection as “The Solitary Reaper”: Poems, in Two Volumes. The poem also features a speaker out on a walk and suddenly dazzled by a moment of transportive beauty—in this case, the source of beauty is not a maiden’s song but a bunch of blooming, dancing daffodils. Furthermore, as with the speaker in “The Solitary Reaper,” the beauty of the moment stays with the speaker long after the encounter has ended.

“The Skylark” by John Clare (1835)

Although far less famous than Wordsworth in his own lifetime, John Clare (1793-1864) remains one of English Romanticism’s greatest nature poets, sharing many similar themes with Wordsworth in terms of his love for the natural world and his valorization of a more traditional, agrarian way of life. “The Skylark” depicts a group of schoolboys, out walking together in nature, who are charmed by the beauty of the skylark’s singing and its apparent freedom.

“Bright Star, would I were as stedfast as thou art” by John Keats (1838)

This poem is among the most famous in English Romanticism, written by John Keats (1795-1821), a member of the “second generation” of Romantics who followed in the footsteps of Wordsworth and his contemporaries.