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.
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
A day
Spent in a round of strenuous idleness.
From Stirling Castle we had seen
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."
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
Every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray.
Babylon,
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,
Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh
That would lament her.
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
Action is transitory — a step, a blow—
The motion of a muscle— this way or that—
'Tis done; and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.
Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.
As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company.
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.
Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.
The sounding cataract
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 harvest of a quiet eye,
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
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.
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind.
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
Ocean is a mighty harmonist.