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.
Drink, pretty creature, drink!
Like an army defeated
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.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine.
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold.
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die,
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
A brotherhood of venerable trees.
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
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.
A famous man is Robin Hood,
The English ballad-singer's joy.
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
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.
Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give,
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!
Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules,
Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought
More for mankind at this unhappy day
Then all the pride of intellect and thought?
O Blithe newcomer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
Is there not
An art, a music, and a stream of words
That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
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.