For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, 20 They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. * * * * * VARIANTS ON THE TEXT [Variant 1: 1815. ... dancing ... 1807.] [Variant 2: 1815. Along the Lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze. 1807] [Variant 3: This stanza was added in the edition of 1815.] [Variant 4: 1807 ... be but gay, 1836. The 1840 edition returns to the text of 1807.] [Variant 5: 1815. ... laughing ... 1807.] The following is from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, under date, Thursday, April 15, 1802: "When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the sea had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more, and yet more; and, at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones, about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake. They looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances, and in the middle of the water, like the sea...." In the edition of 1815 there is a footnote to the lines 'They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude' to the following effect: "The subject of these Stanzas is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it. The one which follows [A] is strictly a Reverie; and neither that, nor the next after it in succession, 'Power of Music', would have been placed here except for the reason given in the foregoing note."