<P> Poems in Two Volumes was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries, including Lord Byron, whom Wordsworth came to despise . Byron said of the volume, in one of its first reviews, "Mr. W (ordsworth) ceases to please,...clothing (his ideas) in language not simple, but puerile". Wordsworth himself wrote ahead to soften the thoughts of The Critical Review, hoping his friend Francis Wrangham would push for a softer approach . He succeeded in preventing a known enemy from writing the review, but it didn't help; as Wordsworth himself said, it was a case of "Out of the frying pan, into the fire". Of any positives within Poems in Two Volumes, the perceived masculinity in "The Happy Warrior", written on the death of Nelson and unlikely to be the subject of attack, was one such . Poems like "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" could not have been further from it . Wordsworth took the reviews stoically . </P> <P> Even Wordsworth's close friend Coleridge said (referring especially to the "child - philosopher" stanzas VII and VIII of "Intimations of Immortality") that the poems contained "mental bombast". Two years later, however, many were more positive about the collection . Samuel Rogers said that he had "dwelt particularly on the beautiful idea of the' Dancing Daffodils"', and this was echoed by Henry Crabb Robinson . Critics were rebutted by public opinion, and the work gained in popularity and recognition, as did Wordsworth . </P> <P> Poems in Two Volumes was savagely reviewed by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (without, however, singling out "I wandered lonely as a Cloud"), but the Review was well known for its dislike of the Lake poets . As Sir Walter Scott put it at the time of the poem's publication, "Wordsworth is harshly treated in the Edinburgh Review, but Jeffrey gives...as much praise as he usually does", and indeed Jeffrey praised the sonnets . </P> <P> Upon the author's death in 1850, The Westminster Review called "I wandered lonely as a Cloud" "very exquisite". </P>

I wandered as a cloud by william wordsworth