“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” the classic poem by William Wordsworth, is a perfect object lesson in the power of nature and beauty to restore us. Perhaps you remember the poem:

The poet recounts wandering “lonely as a cloud” when his walk is interrupted by the sight of “a host, of golden daffodils.” The poem ends with the poet’s reflection on that memory.

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.

Poetry, nature, beauty, and imagination — powerful antidotes to loneliness and the “vacant or pensive” moods that visit us.