'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' and 'The Preservation of Flowers': two remarkable poems, two very different writing styles. This essay will examine their contrasts and similarities, from the relevant formal aspects, to the deeper meanings hidden between the lines. We will examine both writers' use of rhyme scheme, sound structure, word choice, figurative language, and punctuation. It will also touch a bit on the backgrounds of the writers themselves and their inspirations, with the intention of gaining a greater understanding of both texts. The structure and form of both poems are evidently dissimilar. Wordsworth's text contains four stanzas of six lines each and follows a clear rhyme scheme: ABABCC; which means that in each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third, the second with the fourth, and the stanza ends with a rhyming couplet. Bird's sixteen narrative lines follow no formal rhyme scheme. He describes the full rhyme as "too jarring" for his personal tastes. Choose instead: use consonances and close rhymes. Despite this seemingly unconventional style in which the poem is written, it follows iambic pentameter, with each line containing five stressed syllables - "Be-tween the taxi firm and the poll-en shop"1 - with the exception of line 13 which contains six: "Cer-tain cus-to-mers, he slips an ex-tra rose"13. This is a very clever play on words, using the term "extra rose" to reflect the extra syllable in the line, and clearly demonstrates Bird's astute understanding of structure and form. He explains: “There's also a joke about the poem: each line has five accents, but the line 'extra rose' has six accents. One more rose, one more stress. "(Personal Correspondence) A comparison...... middle of paper ...... responded promptly and was very kind and informative. Hi Gerry, I'm back home now, so I have a little more time to chat. Thank you so much for your comment on my poem, I'm glad you liked it. It's based on a real flower stall near where I lived in London, which appeared once during the night. The guy who ran the stall was a really excellent and talkative merchant - had a bit of chatter for all the customers I wanted to write something about fleeting pleasures - a bouquet of flowers, a conversation with a stranger - and the ambiguous impossibility of trying to preserve them obviously some kind of conservation. I don't like using full rhyme in my poems, it seems too jarring. I prefer close rhymes. There's also a joke about the poem: each line has five accents, but the "extra rose" line has six accents. One more rose, one more stress.