William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
Major English poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, launched the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads.
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Whether we be young or old,
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.
Like—but oh, how different!
The eye— it cannot choose but see;
we cannot bid the ear be still;
our bodies feel, where'er they be,
against or with our will.
I wandered 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.
Hail to thee, far above the rest
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.
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.
Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
We take no note of time but from its loss.
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
The good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.