William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworthwas a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 April 1770
almighty bow heads thy
We bow our heads before Thee, and we laudAnd magnify thy name, Almighty God!
age-and-aging beautiful foolish happy nature
With Nature never do they wageA foolish strife; they seeA happy youth, and their old ageIs beautiful and free.
greater
We feel that we are greater than we know.
art darling invisible thou
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!Even yet thou art to meNo bird, but an invisible thing,A voice, a mystery. . . .
dim nights passed three words
Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.
marble mind newton prism seas silent statue strange
Where the statue stood/ Of Newton with his prism and silent face,/ The marble index of a mind for ever/ Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.
land lies ship
Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?
charities duties feet primal scattered shine
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars;The charities that soothe, and heal, and blessAre scattered at the feet of Man, like flowers.
rock sand sun
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf/ Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.
ancient beneath coming deem dim distant drink felt fleeting ghostly kindred language listening mind moods night notes obscure possible purer visionary
. . . I would stand, If the night blackened with a coming storm, Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are The ghostly language of the ancient earth, Or make their dim abode in distant winds. Thence did I drink the visionary power; And deem not profitless those fleeting moods Of shadowy exultation: not for this, That they are kindred to our purer mind And intellectual life; but that the soul, Remembering how she felt, but what she felt Remembering not, retains an obscure sense Of possible sublimity. . . .
books-and-reading both flesh happiness pastime pure strong
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,Are a substantial world, both pure and good:Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
grieve men passed
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shadeOf that which once was great, is passed away.
dare ear fits passion strange
Strange fits of passion have I known:/ And I will dare to tell,/ But in the lover's ear alone,/ What once to me befell.
draws feels life lightly simple
A simple child,That lightly draws its breath,And feels its life in every limb,What should it know of death?