In this installment, Yunte Huang reads “The Daffodils” by William Wordsworth. Poet and critic Yunte Huang is the author of numerous books, including Transpacific Displacement and Shi: A Radical Reading of Chinese Poetry. He has translated Ezra Pound's poetry into Chinese. Huang teaches at the University of California-Santa Barbara. His reading for Romantic Circles was made on the occasion of the 2006 MLA "The Sound of Poetry, The Poetry of Sound" meeting.

William Wordsworth, "The Daffodils"

I WANDER'D 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 stretch'd 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
Outdid 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.