Ref. 29604-18Pupils from Oliver Tomkins Infant School were among 250,000 British children to attempt a world record-breaking poetry reading.

The words "I wandered lonely as a cloud " rang out across the country in a mass recital to celebrate the bicentenary of Wordsworth's daffodil-inspired poem.

Yesterday's Words Worth Reading event was set up by the Wordsworth Trust and Marie Curie Cancer Care to help raise funds to pay for specialist cancer nurses.

Organisers wanted to get children more interested in poetry. It was also hoped a world record would be set for the largest mass poetry reading.

Marie Curie, which has the daffodil as its emblem, originally set out to attract 150,000 schoolchildren to represent the number of people who die of cancer in the UK each year.

Daffodils

By William Wordsworth

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 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

Out-did 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.