The solitary poet

Andrew Sullivan sent me over to Mark Vernon, who has this to say about William Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud": "William Wordsworth, in 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', talked of the 'bliss of solitude'. It develops the 'inward eye', for appreciating nature."  But that's not quite what Wordsworth says:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Anyone who spends any amount of time studying Wordsworth soon gets it dinned into their heads that WW is frequently all about memory.  And that's the case here.  The true significance of the one-time encounter with the field of daffodils emerges in the act of recollection, when the poet's imagination (the "inward eye") conjures up the flowers once again--almost as though the flowers press themselves on the poet ("[t]hey flash"), instead of the poet deliberately thinking them up.   The "bliss of solitude" doesn't develop the "inward eye"; the "inward eye" itself is the bliss.  Moreover, "nature" per se is no longer at issue here.  Physical experience gives way before imaginative experience, which not only can be repeated infinitely, but also transcends limitations of time and space.  (Note that the poet, who was "wandering" in the beginning, is now stationary; it's his "heart" that's moving about.)  Solitude is indeed very important to WW, but "appreciating nature" is not quite the right way to describe its psychological significance.

(Of course, in reality, the encounter with the daffodils was not WW's alone.)