As changeable on the page as in the skies above, they’ve inspired countless poets – now share your poetic experiments in cloud-spotting
Living on the ocean-facing side of an island in the North Atlantic, you can’t but be aware of the ever-changing skyscape. The clouds tend to dominate much of the day’s activity and mood, and even their names are evocative, mysterious and a touch poetic. Stratus, cumulus, cirrus: they’re like names of characters in some lost Greek drama.
Probably the best-known cloud in English poetry is Wordsworth’s lonely wanderer. In a typical example of Wordsworthian anthropocentricism, the cloud is not really a cloud at all – it exists as a stand-in for the poet, who imposes his own supposed loneliness on it. I say supposed because, as Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary makes clear, Wordsworth wasn’t actually alone when he saw the famous daffodils. But perhaps he felt lonely in her company.
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