The yellow flower praised in William Wordsworth’s poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is the daffodil.
The poem describes the speaker seeing a “host” of golden daffodils beside a lake. Wordsworth drew on a real experience: on 15 April 1802, he and his sister Dorothy encountered a long belt of daffodils on the shore of Ullswater in England’s Lake District. The poem was written in 1804 and first published in 1807.
The flowers become more than scenery. Their dancing movement and bright colour lift the speaker’s mood, while the later memory of them brings joy during solitary or reflective moments. This idea—that nature’s emotional effect can deepen after the experience—fits the poem’s Romantic character.
The work is sometimes called “Daffodils,” so the answer is unusually direct. It is not a marigold, primrose, or buttercup. Wordsworth’s daffodils would have been wild flowers, rather than the many cultivated garden varieties commonly grown today.