William Wordsworth Quotes

Imagination! lifting up itself
Before the eye and progress of my Song
Like and unfather'd vapour; here that Power
In all the might of its endowments, came
Athwart me; I was lost as in a cloud,
Halted without a struggle to break through,
And now recovering to my Soul I say
I recognize they glory; in such strength
Of usurpation, in such visitings
Of awful promise, when the light of sense
Goes out in flashes that have shewn to us
The invisible world, doth Greatness make abode
There harbours whether we be young or old.
Our destiny, our nature, and our 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.

Therefore am I still / A lover of the meadows and the woods, / And mountains; and of all that we behold / From this green earth; of all the mighty world / Of eye and ear, both what they half create / And what perceive; well pleased to recognize / In nature and the language of the sense, / The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / Of all my moral being.

I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

I'll teach my boy the sweetest things;
I'll teach him how the owlet sings.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

How does the meadow-flower its bloom
unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and in that freedom
bold.

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And has the nature of infinity.

Hence, in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

A deep distress hath humanised my soul.

The good die first.

If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarised to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the house of man.

Duty were our games.

Books! tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine
A being breathing thoughtful breath
A traveler betwixt life and death
The reason firm the temperate will
Endurance Foresight Strength and skill

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.