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.
Meek Walton's heavenly memory.
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
Mightier far
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.
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is.
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.
Rapine, avarice, expense
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.
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.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"
From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.
For me — farthest from earthiy port to roam
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.
Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
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.
We feel that we are greater than we know.
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great, is passed away.
Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes,
Loose types of things through all degrees.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tosing their heads in sprightly dance.
Thou has left behind
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.
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery.
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.