William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, launched the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads.


 * See also:
 * Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1807)
 * The Excursion (1814)

Quotes


Wordsworths' approval of the locals following a night of dancing during his 1788 summer vacation away from Cambridge University'''.
 * '''"frank hearted maids of rocky Cumberland"

And from all hope I was forever hurled.''' For me—farthest from earthly port to roam Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.
 * '''From the sweet thoughts of home
 * Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XL

That I, at last, a resting-place had found: 'Here: will I dwell,' said I,' my whole life long, Roaming the illimitable waters round; Here will I live, of all but heaven disowned. And end my days upon the peaceful flood— To break my dream the vessel reached its bound; '''And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.'''
 * And oft I thought (my fancy was-so strong)
 * Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XLI

In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.'''
 * '''I travelled among unknown men,
 * I Travelled Among Unknown Men, st. 1 (1799)

Historian of my infancy! Float near me; do not yet depart! Dead times revive in thee: Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art! A solemn image to my heart.
 * Much converse do I find in thee,
 * To a Butterfly (Stay Near Me), st. 1 (1801)

Those bright blue eggs together laid! On me the chance-discovered sight Gleamed like a vision of delight.
 * Behold, within the leafy shade,
 * The Sparrow's Nest, st. 1 (1801)

And humble cares,and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy.
 * She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
 * The Sparrow's Nest, st. 2 (1801)

As twenty days are now.'''
 * '''Sweet childish days, that were as long
 * To a Butterfly (I've Watched You Now a Full Half-Hour), st. 2 (1801)

The snow hath retreated, And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill; The Ploughboy is whooping—anon—anon! There's joy in the mountains: There's life in the fountains; Small clouds are sailing, Blue sky prevailing; The rain is over and gone.
 * Like an army defeated
 * Written in March, st. 2 (1801)

A rainbow in the sky''': So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! '''The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.'''
 * '''My heart leaps up when I behold
 * My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802); the last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
 * Earth has not anything to show more fair:
 * Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, l. 1 (1802)

The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
 * Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
 * Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, l. 11 (1802)

This is idolatry; and these we adore: Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.
 * Rapine, avarice, expense
 * Written in London, September 1802, l. 9 (1802)

Who on that day the word of onset gave!
 * O for a single hour of that Dundee,
 * Sonnet. In the Pass of Killicranky, l. 11 (1803)

When they lie about our feet.
 * Pleasures newly found are sweet
 * To the Same Flower (the Small Celandine), st. 1 (1803)

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.
 * Every gift of noble origin
 * These Times strike Monied Worldlings, l. 1 (1803)

In joy of voice and pinion! Thou, linnet! in thy green array, Presiding spirit here to-day, Dost lead the revels of the May; And this is thy dominion.
 * Hail to thee, far above the rest
 * The Green Linnet, st. 2 (1803)

Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.
 * Lady of the Mere,
 * A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stones and Crags, l. 37 (1803)

Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.
 * There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
 * Yew-Trees, l. 1 (1803)

This solitary Tree! '''A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed.'''
 * Of vast circumference and gloom profound,
 * Yew-Trees, l. 9 (1803)

Bold in maternal nature's care And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee Some concord with humanity, Given to no other flower I see The forest through.
 * Bright flower! whose home is everywhere
 * To the Daisy (third poem), st. 1 (1803)

I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?
 * O Blithe newcomer! I have heard,
 * To the Cuckoo, st. 1 (1804)

A voice, a mystery.
 * No bird, but an invisible thing,
 * To the Cuckoo, st. 4 (1804)

Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace, Which Love makes for thee!
 * Thou unassuming Common-place
 * To the Same Flower (the Daisy), st. 1 (1805)

I sit, and play with similes, Loose types of things through all degrees.
 * Oft on the dappled turf at ease
 * To the Same Flower (the Daisy), st. 2 (1805)

The consecration, and the poet's dream.
 * The light that never was, on sea or land,
 * Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, st. 4 (1805)


 * Dear Child of Nature, let them rail!
 * To a Young Lady, st. 1 (1805)

Shalt show us how divine a thing A Woman may be made.
 * Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
 * To a Young Lady, st. 2 (1805)

And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave.
 * But an old age serene and bright,
 * To a Young Lady, st. 3 (1805)

I cannot take possession of the sky, Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there One of a mighty multitude whose way Is a perpetual harmony and dance Magnificent.
 * Happier of happy though I be, like them
 * The Recluse, l. 198 (1805)

An art, a music, and a stream of words That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?
 * Is there not
 * The Recluse, l. 401 (1805)

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.
 * Not Chaos, not
 * The Recluse, l. 788 (1805)

Smiles that with motion of their own Do spread, and sink, and rise.
 * She hath smiles to earth unknown—
 * Cancelled lines originally in the second stanza of Louisa (1805)


 * Like—but oh, how different!
 * Yes, It Was the Mountain Echo, st. 2 (1806)

Ourselves, no prison is.
 * In truth the prison, unto which we doom
 * Nuns Fret Not, l. 8 (1806)

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
 * The world is too much with us; late and soon,
 * The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 1 (1806)

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
 * Great God! I'd rather be
 * The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 9 (1806)

Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array.
 * Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go?
 * Where Lies the Land, l. 1 (1806)

Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
 * Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
 * To Sleep (A Flock of Sheep), l. 13 (1806)

Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
 * Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
 * Personal Talk, sonnet 3 (1806)


 * Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.
 * Letter to Lady Beaumont (May 21, 1807)

The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea.
 * It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
 * It Is a Beautious Evening, l. 1 (1807)

And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.
 * Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
 * It Is a Beautious Evening, l. 12 (1807)

And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
 * Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
 * On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 1 (1807)

Of that which once was great, is passed away.
 * Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
 * On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 13 (1807)

Powers that will work for thee,—air, earth, and skies! There 's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind.
 * Thou has left behind
 * To Toussaint L'Ouverture, l. 12 (1807)

England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.
 * Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
 * London, 1802, l. 1 (1807)

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness.
 * Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
 * London, 1802, l. 9 (1807)

That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.
 * We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
 * It Is Not to Be Thought Of, l. 11 (1807)

Slow to begin, and never ending; Of serious faith, and inward glee; That was the song,—the song for me!
 * He sang of love, with quiet blending,
 * O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art, l. 17 (1807)

One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.
 * Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
 * Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland, l. 1 (1807)

His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
 * Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
 * Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, l. 161 (1807)

The motion of a muscle—this way or that— 'Tis done; and in the after-vacancy We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.
 * Action is transitory—a step, a blow—
 * The White Doe of Rylstone, l. 1 (1807)

Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought More for mankind at this unhappy day Then all the pride of intellect and thought?
 * A few strong instincts and a few plain rules,
 * Alas! What Boots the Long Laborious Quest?, l. 11 (1809)


 * Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
 * Letter to his Wife (April 29 1812)

A soaring spirit is their prime delight.
 * A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
 * From the Dark Chambers of Dejection Freed, l. 13 (1814)

Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
 * But shapes that come not at an earthly call,
 * Dion, st. 5 (1814)


 * Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind.
 * Surprised by Joy, l. 1 (1815)

Those shocks of passion can prepare That kill the bloom before its time; And blanch, without the owner's crime, The most resplendent hair.
 * And beauty, for confiding youth,
 * Lament of Mary Queen of Scots, st. 6 (1817)

That would emulate a star.
 * What is pride? A whizzing rocket
 * Inscriptions Supposed to be Found in and near a Hermit's Cell, l. 11 (1818)

To live, and act, and serve the future hour.
 * Enough, if something from our hands have power
 * The River Duddon, sonnet 34 - Afterthought, l. 10 (1820)

We feel that we are greater than we know.
 * Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
 * The River Duddon, sonnet 34 - Afterthought, l. 13 (1820)


 * The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
 * Not Love, Not War, Nor the Tumultuous Swell, l. 14

Are trivial pomp and city noise, Hardening a heart that loathes or slights What every natural heart enjoys?
 * Lives there a man whose sole delights
 * To the Lady Fleming, st. 6 (1823)

If such do on this earth abide, May season apathy with scorn, May turn indifference to pride; And still be not unblest—compared With him who grovels, self-debarred From all that lies within the scope Of holy faith and christian hope; Or, shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost.
 * A soul so pitiably forlorn,
 * To the Lady Fleming, st. 7 (1823)

From out the bitterness of things.
 * But hushed be every thought that springs
 * Elegiac Stanzas. Addressed to Sir G.H.B., st. 7 (1824)

Whose veil is unremoved Till heart with heart in concord beats, And the lover is beloved.'''
 * '''True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
 * To ____ . (Let other Bards of Angels sing), st. 3 (1824)

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
 * Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
 * To a Skylark, st. 2 (1825)

Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart
 * Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,


 * Scorn Not the Sonnet, l. 1 (1827)


 * Ocean is a mighty harmonist.
 * On the Power of Sound, st. 12 (1828)


 * These feeble and fastidious times.
 * Letter to Alexander Dyce (April 19, 1830)

Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love.
 * Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower
 * Poems Composed or Suggested During a Tour in the Summer of 1833, "There!" said a Stripling, l. 10 (1833)

Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
 * Small service is true service while it lasts.
 * To a Child. Written in her Album (1834)

Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth's heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.
 * One solace yet remains for us who came
 * Memorials of a Tour in Italy (1837), IV ("story" refers to History)

Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold.
 * How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
 * A Poet!—He Hath Put His Heart to School, l. 9 (1842)

Find little to perceive.'''
 * '''Minds that have nothing to confer
 * Yes, Thou art Fair, Yet Be Not Moved, st. 2 (1845)


 * Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
 * Attributed by Anna Jameson in her A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories and Fancies (1854)

Descriptive Sketches Taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps (1793)
We do think all lovers of nature and free spirits should read these pages before visiting Lake Como. In Wordsworth’s view, the Earth itself is jealous of Lake Como because she’s aware of its unique beauty.”

And, Lake Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth

Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth

Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake

Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots

Of Indian-corn tended by dark-eyed maids;

Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines,

Winding from house to house, from town to town,

Sole link that binds them to each other ; walks,

League after league, and cloistral avenues,

Where silence dwells if music be not there:

While yet a youth undisciplined in verse,

Through fond ambition of that hour, I strove

To chant your praise ; nor can approach you now

Ungreeted by- a more melodious song,

Where tones of nature smoothed by learned art

May flow in lasting current. Like a breeze

Or sunbeam over your domain I passed

In motion without pause; but ye have left

Your beauty with me, a serene accord

Of forms and colors, passive, yet endowed

In their subinissivencss with power as sweet

And gracious, almost might I dare to say,

As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love,

Or the remembrance of a generous deed,

Or mildest visitation of pure thought,

When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked

Religiously, in silent blessedness;

Sweet as this last herself, for such it is.

Lines (1795)
Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, which stands near the Lake of Esthwaile, on a desolate part of the Shore, commanding a beautiful Prospect.
 * Lines

That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod First covered, and here taught this aged Tree With its dark arms to form a circling bower, I well remember.'''—He was one who owned No common soul.''' In youth by science nursed. And led by nature into a wild scene Of lofty hopes, he to the world went forth A favoured Being, knowing no desire Which genius did not hallow; 'gainst the taint Of dissolute tongues, and jealousy, and hate, And scorn,—against all enemies prepared, All but neglect. The world, for so it thought, Owed him no service; wherefore he at once With indignation turned himself away, And with the food of pride sustained his soul In solitude.
 * —Who he was

An emblem of his own unfruitful life: And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze On the more distant scene,—how lovely 'tis Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time, When nature had subdued him to herself, Would he forget those Beings to whose minds, Warm from the labours of benevolence, The world and human life appeared a scene Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh, Inly disturbed, to think that others felt What he must never feel: and so, lost Man! On visionary views would fancy feed, Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale He died,—this seat his only monument.
 * A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here

Of young imagination have kept pure Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness; that he who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he has never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man whose eye Is ever on himself doth look on one, The least of Nature's works, one who might move The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds Unlawful, ever. '''O be wiser, thou ! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love; True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart.'''
 * If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms

Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.
 * Oh, be wise, Thou!
 * Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23

Peter Bell (1798)
There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat, Shaped like the crescent-moon.
 * There's something in a flying horse,
 * Prologue, stanza 1

Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears.
 * The common growth of Mother Earth
 * Prologue, stanza 27

A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.
 * A primrose by a river's brim
 * Part I, stanza 12

Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!
 * The soft blue sky did never melt
 * Part I, stanza 15

And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away.
 * On a fair prospect some have looked,
 * Part I, stanza 16

In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open sky!
 * As if the man had fixed his face,
 * Part I, stanza 16

Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)


Nor let this necessity … be considered as a degradation of the Poet’s art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love; further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows and feels and lives and moves … Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science … In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, — in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time … Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge — it is as immortal as the heart of man.
 * The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure …
 * Preface


 * The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.
 * Preface


 * A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.
 * Preface


 * What is a Poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.
 * Preface


 * But, whenever a portion of this facility we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest of him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that with is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of these passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produced, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering.
 * Preface


 * I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
 * Preface


 * All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.
 * Preface

That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?
 * &mdash; A simple child,
 * We Are Seven, st. 1 (1798)

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
 * In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
 * Lines Written in Early Spring, st. 1 (1798)

What man has made of man?
 * Have I not reason to lament
 * Lines Written in Early Spring, st. 6 (1798)

we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where'er they be, against or with our will.'''
 * '''The eye—it cannot choose but see;
 * Expostulation and Reply, st. 5 (1798)

Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness.
 * Nor less I deem that there are Powers
 * Expostulation and Reply, st. 6 (1798)

Let Nature be your teacher.
 * Come forth into the light of things,
 * The Tables Turned, st. 4 (1798)

May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
 * One impulse from a vernal wood
 * The Tables Turned, st. 6 (1798)

Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.
 * O Reader! had you in your mind
 * Simon Lee, st. 9 (1798)

With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.
 * I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
 * Simon Lee, st. 12 (1798)

Into a lover's head! "O mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!"
 * What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
 * Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known, st. 7 (1799)

Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:
 * She dwelt among the untrodden ways
 * She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. 1 (1799)

When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!
 * She lived unknown, and few could know
 * She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. 3 (1799)

Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own."
 * Three years she grew in sun and shower,
 * Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower, st. 1 (1799)

I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.
 * A slumber did my spirit seal;

No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.
 * A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal (1799)

Beside a human door!
 * The sweetest thing that ever grew
 * Lucy Gray, or Solitude, st. 2 (1799)

That whistles in the wind.
 * And sings a solitary song
 * Lucy Gray, or Solitude, st. 16 (1799)

So much of earth—so much of heaven, And such impetuous blood.
 * A youth to whom was given
 * Ruth, st. 21 (1799)

My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.
 * My eyes are dim with childish tears,

Thus fares it still in our decay: And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.
 * The Fountain, st. 8 & 9 (1799)


 * Something between a hindrance and a help.
 * Michael. A Pastoral Poem, l. 189 (1800)


 * Drink, pretty creature, drink!
 * The Pet Lamb. A Pastoral, st. 1 (1800)

And its forlorn Hic jacet!
 * May no rude hand deface it,
 * Ellen Irwin, or the Braes of Kirtle, st. 7 (1800)

Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

 * Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798

Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a sweet inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, Which on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
 * Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
 * Stanza 1

Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On '''that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.''' Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, '''we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.'''
 * These beauteous forms,
 * Stanza 2

How often has my spirit turned to thee!
 * O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
 * Stanza 3

With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, '''The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years.''' And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills;
 * And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
 * Stanza 3

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was.
 * For nature then
 * Stanza 3

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
 * The sounding cataract
 * Stanza 3

And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. '''For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.''' And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; '''a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.''' Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
 * That time is past,
 * Stanza 3

If I were not thus taught, Should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and '''in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her'''; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for '''she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings.'''
 * Nor, perchance,
 * Stanza 4

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence, wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; And that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came, Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. '''Now wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.'''
 * If I should be, where I no more can hear
 * Stanza 4

A Poet's Epitaph (1799)
One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave.
 * A fingering slave,
 * Stanza 5

An intellectual All-in-all!
 * A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
 * Stanza 8

A music sweeter than their own.
 * He murmurs near the running brooks
 * Stanza 10

He will seem worthy of your love.
 * And you must love him, ere to you
 * Stanza 11

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
 * The harvest of a quiet eye,
 * Stanza 13

The Prelude (1799-1805)

 * Text from the 1850 edition, unless otherwise stated.



A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will.
 * Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
 * Bk. I, l. 1

Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.
 * Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up
 * Bk. I, l. 301

Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.'''
 * '''Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
 * Bk. I, l. 340

Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me.
 * The grim shape
 * Bk. I, l. 381

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
 * Huge and mighty forms, that do not live
 * Bk. I, l. 398

Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.
 * Where the statue stood
 * Bk. III, l. 60

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.
 * When from our better selves we have too long
 * Bk. IV, l. 354

Spent in a round of strenuous idleness.
 * A day
 * Bk. IV, l. 377

Risen on mid-noon.
 * Another morn
 * Bk. VI, l. 197

Our destiny, our being's heart and home, Is with infinitude, and only there'''; With hope it is, hope that can never die, Effort and expectation, and desire, And something evermore about to be.
 * '''Whether we be young or old,
 * Bk. VI, l. 603

In honour, as in one community, Scholars and gentlemen.
 * Brothers all
 * Bk. IX, l. 227

But to be young was very heaven!'''
 * '''Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
 * Bk. XI, l. 108


 * The budding rose above the rose full blown.
 * Bk. XI, l. 121

One great society alone on earth: The noble Living and the noble Dead.'''
 * '''There is
 * Bk. XI, l. 393

Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.
 * Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
 * Thoughts Suggested on the Banks of the Nith, st. 10

A kind of heavenly destiny.
 * And stepping westward seemed to be
 * Stepping Westward, st. 2

And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
 * I listened, motionless and still;
 * The Solitary Reaper, st. 4

The English ballad-singer's joy.
 * A famous man is Robin Hood,
 * Rob Roy's Grave, st. 1

Forgive me if the phrase be strong;— '''A Poet worthy of Rob Roy Must scorn a timid song.'''
 * Yet was Rob Roy as wise as brave;
 * Rob Roy's Grave, st. 3

They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves.'''
 * '''Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
 * Rob Roy's Grave, st. 5

Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take, who have the power, And they should keep who can.
 * The good old rule
 * Rob Roy's Grave, st. 9

And Rob was lord below.
 * The Eagle, he was lord above,
 * Rob Roy's Grave, st. 14


 * A brotherhood of venerable trees.
 * Sonnet. Composed at ____ Castle, l. 6

The mazy Forth unravelled; Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay, And with the Tweed had travelled; And when we came to Clovenford, Then said "my winsome marrow," "Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside, And see the braes of Yarrow."
 * From Stirling Castle we had seen
 * Yarrow Unvisited, st. 1

She Was a Phantom of Delight (1804)
When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair, Like twilights too her dusky hair, But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn.
 * She was a Phantom of delight
 * Stanza 1

For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
 * A Creature not too bright or good
 * Stanza 2

The very pulse of the machine.
 * And now I see with eye serene
 * Stanza 3

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command.
 * The reason firm, the temperate will,
 * Stanza 3

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (1804)
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.
 * I wandered lonely as a cloud
 * Stanza 1

And twinkle on the milky way.
 * Continuous as the stars that shine
 * Stanza 2

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
 * Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
 * Stanza 2

In such a jocund company.
 * A poet could not but be gay,
 * Stanza 3

Which is the bliss of solitude.
 * That inward eye
 * Stanza 4

Ode to Duty (1805)

 * Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
 * Stanza 1

To check the erring, and reprove.
 * A light to guide, a rod
 * Stanza 1

I feel the weight of chance-desires: My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.
 * Me this unchartered freedom tires;
 * Stanza 5

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
 * Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
 * Stanza 7.

The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give, And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!
 * Give unto me, made lowly wise,
 * Stanza 8

Character of the Happy Warrior (1806)
That every man in arms should wish to be?
 * Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
 * Line 1

And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! Turns his necessity to glorious gain.
 * Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
 * Line 12

Of their bad influence, and their good receives.
 * Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
 * Line 17

As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress.
 * More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
 * Line 23

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover.
 * But who, if he be called upon to face
 * Line 48

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
 * And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
 * Line 53

Nor thought of tender happiness betray.
 * Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
 * Line 72

Resolution and Independence (1807)
In our dejection do we sink as low.
 * As high as we have mounted in delight,
 * Stanza 4

Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
 * But how can he expect that others should
 * Stanza 6

The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough, along the mountain-side: By our own spirits are we deified: We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
 * I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
 * Stanza 7

And moveth all together, if it moves at all.
 * That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
 * Stanza 11

Of ordinary men.
 * Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
 * Stanza 14


 * And mighty poets in their misery dead.
 * Stanza 17

Laodamia (1814)
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.
 * For the gods approve
 * Stanza 13

Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway Of magic potent over sun and star, Is Love, though oft to agony distrest, And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast.
 * Mightier far
 * Stanza 14

Brought from a pensive though a happy place.
 * Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,
 * Stanza 16

In worlds whose course is equable and pure; No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,— The past unsighed for, and the future sure.
 * He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
 * Stanza 17

In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner air, And fields invested with purpureal gleams.
 * Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there
 * Stanza 18

And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.
 * Yet tears to human suffering are due;
 * Stanza 28

Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly, Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh That would lament her.
 * Babylon,
 * Part I, No. 25 - Missions and Travels

Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main ocean they, this deed accurst, An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed. "'The Avon to the Severn runs, / The Severn to the sea; / And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad / Wide as the waters be'", Daniel Webster, Address before the Sons of New Hampshire (1849), and similarly quoted by the Rev. John Cumming in the Voices of the Dead.
 * As thou these ashes, little brook! will bear
 * Part II, No. 17 - Wicliffe; in obedience to the order of the Council of Constance (1415), the remains of Wickliffe were exhumed and burned to ashes, and these cast into the Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by; and "thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over", Thomas Fuller, Church History, section ii, book iv, paragraph 53; Compare also: "What Heraclitus would not laugh, or what Democritus would not weep?… For though they digged up his body, burned his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the word of God and truth of his doctrine, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn", Fox, Book of Martyrs, vol. i. p. 606 (edition, 1611); "Some prophet of that day said,—


 * Habit rules the unreflecting herd.
 * Part II, No. 28 - Reflections

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an Angel's wing.
 * The feather, whence the pen
 * Part III, No. 5 - Walton's Book of Lives. Compare: "The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing / Made of a quill from an angel's wing", Henry Constable, Sonnet; "Whose noble praise / Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing", Dorothy Berry, Sonnet


 * Meek Walton's heavenly memory.
 * Part III, No. 5 – Walton's Book of Lives

Against a champion cased in adamant.
 * But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
 * Part III, No. 7 - Persecution of the Scottish Covenanters

Of nicely calculated less or more.
 * Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
 * Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Lingering and wandering on as loth to die, Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality.
 * Where music dwells
 * Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)


Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath.
 * Every gift of noble origin
 * These Times strike Monied Worldlings

Who on that day the word of onset gave!
 * Oh for a single hour of that Dundee
 * Sonnet, in the Pass of Killicranky


 * In years that bring the philosophic mind.
 * Intimations of Immortality Stanza 10

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
 * To me the meanest flower that blows can give
 * Intimations of Immortality Stanza 11

Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.
 * Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
 * The Borderers Act iv. Sc. 2

Enjoys the air it breathes.
 * And 't is my faith, that every flower
 * Lines written in Early Spring

Or surely you 'll grow double! Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks! Why all this toil and trouble?
 * Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
 * The Tables Turned


 * The bane of all that dread the Devil.
 * The Idiot Boy

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.
 * The fretful stir
 * Lines completed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

To self-reproach.
 * Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel
 * The Old Cumberland Beggar

So in the eye of Nature let him die!
 * As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
 * The Old Cumberland Beggar

For once that Peter was respected.
 * Full twenty times was Peter feared,
 * Peter Bell, Part I, stanza 3


 * One of those heavenly days that cannot die.
 * Nutting

Half hidden from the eye; Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.
 * A violet by a mossy stone
 * She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. ? (1799)

To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
 * The stars of midnight shall be dear
 * Three years she grew in Sun and Shower

Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one!
 * The cattle are grazing,
 * The Cock is crowing

By myself a lonely pleasure,— Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.
 * Often have I sighed to measure
 * To the Small Celandine

Of still and serious thought went round, It seemed as if he drank it up, He felt with spirit so profound.
 * Yet sometimes, when the secret cup
 * Matthew

Is beautiful and free.
 * A happy youth, and their old age
 * The Fountain, st. ?? (1799)

We wear a face of joy because We have been glad of yore.
 * And often, glad no more,
 * The Fountain, st. ?? (1799)

Or reap an acre of his neighbor's corn.
 * Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
 * The Brothers

Who is not wise at all.
 * And he is oft the wisest man
 * The Oak and the Broom

But something ails it now: the spot is cursed."
 * "A jolly place," said he, "in times of old!
 * Hart-leap Well, part ii


 * Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
 * Hart-leap Well, part ii

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
 * Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
 * Hart-leap Well, part ii


 * A noticeable man, with large gray eyes.
 * Stanzas written in Thomson's Castle of Indolence

When such are wanted.
 * We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
 * To the Daisy


 * The poet's darling.
 * To the Daisy

Just God, forgive!
 * The best of what we do and are,
 * Thoughts suggested on the Banks of the Nith

And battles long ago.
 * For old, unhappy, far-off things,
 * The Solitary Reaper

That has been, and may be again.
 * Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
 * The Solitary Reaper

Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, Frozen by distance.
 * Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;
 * Address to Kilchurn Castle

The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow!
 * Let beeves and home-bred kine partake
 * Yarrow Unvisited


 * A remnant of uneasy light.
 * The Matron of Jedborough

A Miser's pensioner,—behold our lot!
 * To be a Prodigal's favourite,—then, worse truth,
 * The Small Celandine


 * Maidens withering on the stalk.
 * Personal Talk, Stanza 1

Are those that are by distance made more sweet.
 * Sweetest melodies
 * Personal Talk, Stanza 2

And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.
 * The gentle Lady married to the Moor,
 * Personal Talk, Stanza 3

Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!— The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
 * Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
 * Personal Talk, Stanza 4


 * A power is passing from the earth.
 * Lines on the expected Dissolution of Mr. Fox


 * Earth helped him with the cry of blood.
 * Song at the Feast of Broughton Castle

Was with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o'er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height.
 * The monumental pomp of age
 * The White Doe of Rylstone, canto iii

With these dark words begins my tale; And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring When prayer is of no avail?
 * "What is good for a bootless bene?"
 * Force of Prayer

To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.
 * But thou that didst appear so fair
 * Yarrow Visited

Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.
 * 'T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
 * Weak is the Will of Man

And magnify thy name Almighty God! But man is thy most awful instrument In working out a pure intent.
 * We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud
 * Ode. Imagination before Content

In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness.
 * Sad fancies do we then affect,
 * Ode to Lycoris

Around his placid temples curled; And Shakespeare at his side,—a freight, If clay could think and mind were weight, For him who bore the world!
 * The sightless Milton, with his hair
 * The Italian Itinerant

That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth.
 * Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows
 * Sky-Prospect from the Plain of France

Of servile opportunity to gold.
 * Turning, for them who pass, the common dust
 * Desultory Stanza

Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.
 * To the solid ground
 * A Volant Tribe of Bards on Earth

The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
 * Soft is the music that would charm forever;
 * Not Love, not War

A subject, not a slave!
 * A Briton even in love should be
 * Ere with Cold Beads of Midnight Dew

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains,—alas! too few.
 * And when a damp
 * Scorn not the Sonnet


 * But he is risen, a later star of dawn.
 * A Morning Exercise


 * Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark.
 * A Morning Exercise

And every motion of his starry train Seem governed by a strain Of music, audible to him alone.
 * When his veering gait
 * The Triad

Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!
 * Alas! how little can a moment show
 * The Triad


 * Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.
 * On the Power of Sound, xii

That no philosophy can lift.
 * The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift,
 * Presentiments


 * Nature's old felicities.
 * The Trosachs

Was frozen at its marvellous source, The rapt one, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
 * Since every mortal power of Coleridge
 * Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg

From sunshine to the sunless land!
 * How fast has brother followed brother,
 * Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg

Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of history?
 * Those old credulities, to Nature dear,
 * Memorials of a Tour in Italy, iv

Misattributed

 * Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer.
 * Actually Night I, line 390 of Edward Young's Night Thoughts


 * Faith is a passionate intuition
 * Garbled version of c. l 1295 of Despondency Corrected (Vol. 5 of W's Poetical Works on Gurenberg)


 * How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
 * Occasionally misattributed to Wordsworth, but in fact by Edward Young again. It is from his Night Thoughts, Night II, line 602

He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.
 * Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd;
 * Another couplet from Edward Young: this time Night Thoughts, Night II, line 160


 * Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.
 * This is only a slightly misquoted version of "Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them", written by Frank Lloyd Wright in the magazine Architectural Record in March 1908


 * We take no note of time but from its loss.
 * Actually Night I, lines 55-56 of Young's Night Thoughts


 * What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.
 * This was not Wordsworth's viewpoint at all. The words are in fact those of Bertrand Russell in his Sceptical Essays (1928), p. 157


 * If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
 * Actually Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Driftwood (1857)

Quotes about Wordsworth

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source


 * My poetry has a haunted sense to it and it has a sorrow and a grievingness in it that comes directly from being split, not in two but in twenty, and never being able to reconcile all the places that I am. I think of it as Wordsworth did when he said we come into this world "trailing clouds of glory," when he said nothing can bring back the hour when we saw "splendor in the grass and glory in the flower." We shall not weep but find strength in what remains behind. That poem-I was in college, I was a sophomore when I read it, and I just wept. I was completely, absolutely desolate because I thought he understood. He understood, of course, in his own way exactly what happens when your reality is so disordered that you can't ever make it whole, but you have the knowledge of what has happened, what has been done.
 * Paula Gunn Allen Interview in Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets by Joseph Bruchac (1987)


 * You may have experienced this fundamental energy spontaneously, at some high point in your life. Wordsworth described it as: "A sense sublime/Of something far more deeply interfused,/Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/And the round ocean and the living air,/And the blue sky, and in the mind of man..."
 * Laura Archera Huxley "THE ART OF CONVERTING ENERGY" in You Are Not The Target (1963)


 * Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.
 * Robert Browning "The Lost Leader", line 1 (1845)
 * On Wordsworth's acceptance of the Poet Laureateship


 * The languid way in which he gives you a handful of numb unresponsive fingers is very significant. It seems also rather to grieve him that you have any admiration for anybody but him. No man that I ever met has give me less, has disappointed me less. My peace be with him, and a happy evening to his, on the whole, respectable life.
 * Thomas Carlyle in J.A. Froude's Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London 1834-1881 (1884)


 * He lived amidst th'untrodden ways To Rydal Lake that lead:- A bard whom there were none to praise, And very few to read. Behind a cloud his mystic sense, Deep-hidden, who can spy? Bright as the night, when not a star Is shining in the sky.  Unread his works – his "Milk-white Doe" With dust is dark and dim; It's still in Longman's shop, and Oh! The difference to him!
 * Hartley Coleridge "He Lived Amidst Th'Untrodden Ways" (1827)


 * I also liked the Romantic poets. Wordsworth, Keats, Burns and Blake were some of my favourites. There was something about their rebellious spirit against the evils of industrialization that moved me. Of course now, some of their pessimism, mysticism and limited critical realist visions make me quite uncomfortable.
 * Micere Githae Mugo in Talking with African Writers by Jane Wilkinson

(1825)
 * He is in this sense the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them; the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand them; the great despise. The fashionable may ridicule them: but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die.
 * William Hazlitt The Spirit of the Age, "Mr. Wordsworth"


 * Wordsworth would have been very upset to know that his wonderful poems were being used as a weapon of empire. That is why, as soon as I had my own garden, I planted twenty thousand daffodils on the lawn. I was going to stop at ten, but they were just so beautiful that I kept going. It was, I suppose, my reconciliation with Wordsworth.
 * Jamaica Kincaid Interview with The Paris Review (2022)


 * He became an optimist on the day when he perceived reality.
 * Émile Legouis.


 * Wordsworth said "the child is father to the man" and that poetry is "emotion recalled in tranquility." I must say that he had something there although I wouldn't exactly put it in those same words. But poetry begins with the ability to recognize that you are feeling and to be able to re-create that feeling, to get in touch with it again. It isn't lost. To emote is not poetry. To emote is absolutely necessary, but that is not poetry. It's vital to recall the emotion that moved you and to see through it to the thrill out of which that emotion grew. Then you begin to make connections. It's the seeing through that enables you to begin making the images that connect with an experience different from yours. The magic that occurs with poetry is the ability to see through emotion.
 * 1978 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)


 * I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in, the common feelings and common destiny of human beings.
 * John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873), p. 148


 * Time-saving... became an important part of labor-saving. And as time was accumulated and put by, it was reinvested, like money capital, in new forms of exploitation. From now on filling time and killing time became important considerations: the early paleotechnic employers even stole time from their workers by blowing the factory whistle... earlier in the morning, or moving the hands of the clock... during lunch... Time was a commodity in the sense that money had become a commodity. Time as pure duration, time dedicated to contemplation and reverie, time divorced from mechanical operations, was treated as heinous waste. The paleotechnic world did not heed Wordsworth's Expostulation and Reply: it had no mind to sit on an old gray stone and dream its time away.
 * Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934)


 * But that which Wordsworth knew, even the old man When poetry had failed like desire, was something I have yet to learn, and you, Duddon, Have learned and re-learned to forget and forget again. Not the radical, the poet and heretic, To whom the water-forces shouted and the fells Were like a blackboard for the scrawls of God, But the old man, inarticulate and humble, Knew that eternity flows in a mountain beck.
 * Norman Nicholson "To the River Duddon", line 54 (1944)


 * I think that poetry, in general, after a certain point in a poet's life, has to do with the acknowledgment of mortality. And even the most joyful poems have to do with, "Yes, let's not forget that life is brief." Once I started dealing with grief in poetry, I discovered that I had found my way to poetry. I think that so many young poets are only writing about the joy of love and that sort of thing and don't understand that the great poetry, like Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle" and like Wordsworth's "Intimations" and "Tintern Abby," has all been a moment when the poet realizes that "this is my time to express what I have gathered in this brief life."
 * Judith Ortiz Cofer, interview (2000) in A Poet's Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets


 * He wasn't a man as was thowte a deal o' for his potry when he was hereabout. It hed no laugh in it same as Lile Hartley [Coleridge]'s, bided a deal o makkin I darsay. It was kept oer long in his heead mappen. But then for aw that, he had best eye to mountains and streams, and buildings in the daale, notished ivvry stean o' the fellside, and we nin on us durst bang a bowder stean a bit or cut a bit coppy or raase an old wa' doon when he was astir.
 * Canon Rawnsley, recording a Westmorland peasant's memories of Wordsworth, in Literary Associations of the English Lakes (1894) p. 137


 * I began seriously writing in a period (the 1950s to late 1960s) in American poetry that assumed extreme gender positioning-"the poet is a man speaking to men," as Wordsworth had put it even as he was trying to democratize English poetry.
 * Adrienne Rich Arts of the Possible (2001)


 * In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period he was called a "bad" man. Then he became "good", abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and wrote bad poetry.
 * Bertrand Russell, "The Harm That Good Men Do", in Sceptical Essays (1928)


 * What a beastly and pitiful wretch that Wordsworth! That such a man should be such a poet! I can compare him with no one but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the most natural and tender of lyric poets.
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letter to Thomas Love Peacock (25 July 1818)


 * Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine.
 * J. K. Stephen "A Sonnet", line 1 (1891)


 * Wordsworth went to the lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying ([1889] 2004) p. 10