I wandered lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils) Memory and the Past Quotes

You don’t think about verb tenses through much of the poem. It reads like a straightforward narrative which, though not set in the present, still has this present-y atmosphere to it because of phrases like "all at once."

The poem could have worked just fine if it ended here. Sad man becomes happy: a perfect plot. But no, Wordsworth has to be Wordsworth and add more layers of complexity.

The final stanza hits us with a surprise: the daffodil scene wasn’t something that happened yesterday, or even last week. It happened a while ago. Now the speaker is giving us a memory about his memories.