I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
SATB a cappella
2021 winner of Chicago a cappella’s HerVoice competition. Aleatoric choral parts underlay solo lines in this piece, written during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The work is an impressive feat of text-painting: Performers can sing lines slightly staggered to create a hazy, pillowing effect. The ebb and flow of the text clouds...rightly latches onto the ephemerality of Wordsworth’s original, not its pretty scenery.”
—Chicago Tribune, February 12, 2022
Duration: 6:00 Difficulty: 4 (medium advanced)
Text: William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:
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.
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