englischer Dichter
296 quotes found
"Du schaust umher auf unsrer Mutter Erde,// als wärst ohn’ Daseinszweck Du Erdenwesen,// als wären hinterlassen Dir nicht Werte,// und vor dir keiner wär gewesen!"
"Weisheit liegt oftmals näher, wenn wir uns zu Etwas herablassen, als wenn wir uns über Etwas erheben."
"The child is father to the man."
"I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee."
"Much converse do I find in thee, Historian of my infancy! Float near me; do not yet depart! Dead times revive in thee: Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art! A solemn image to my heart."
"Behold, within the leafy shade, Those bright blue eggs together laid! On me the chance-discovered sight Gleamed like a vision of delight."
"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares,and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy."
"Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now."
"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."
"My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety."
"Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."
"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!"
"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."
"O for a single hour of that Dundee, Who on that day the word of onset gave!"
"Pleasures newly found are sweet When they lie about our feet."
"Every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath."
"Hail to thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion! Thou, linnet! in thy green array, Presiding spirit here to-day, Dost lead the revels of the May; And this is thy dominion."
"There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore."
"Of vast circumference and gloom profound, This solitary Tree! A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed."
"Bright flower! whose home is everywhere Bold in maternal nature's care And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee Some concord with humanity, Given to no other flower I see The forest through."
"O Blithe newcomer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?"
"No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery."
"Thou unassuming Common-place Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace, Which Love makes for thee!"
"Oft on the dappled turf at ease I sit, and play with similes, Loose types of things through all degrees."
"The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet's dream."
"Dear Child of Nature, let them rail!"
"Thou, while thy babes around thee cling, Shalt show us how divine a thing A Woman may be made."
"But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave."
"She hath smiles to earth unknown— Smiles that with motion of their own Do spread, and sink, and rise."
"Like—but oh, how different!"
"In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is."
"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!"
"Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."
"Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go? Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array."
"Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!"
"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."
"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."
"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea."
"Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not."
"Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty."
"Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great, is passed away."
"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."
"Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters."
"Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness."
"We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held."
"He sang of love, with quiet blending, Slow to begin, and never ending; Of serious faith, and inward glee; That was the song,—the song for me!"
"Two Voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice."
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
"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."
"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?"
"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
"A cheerful life is what the Muses love, A soaring spirit is their prime delight."
"But shapes that come not at an earthly call, Will not depart when mortal voices bid."
"Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind."
"And beauty, for confiding youth, Those shocks of passion can prepare That kill the bloom before its time; And blanch, without the owner's crime, The most resplendent hair."
"What is pride? A whizzing rocket That would emulate a star."
"Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour."
"Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know."
"The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly."
"Lives there a man whose sole delights Are trivial pomp and city noise, Hardening a heart that loathes or slights What every natural heart enjoys?"
"A soul so pitiably forlorn, If such do on this earth abide, May season apathy with scorn, May turn indifference to pride; And still be not unblest—compared With him who grovels, self-debarred From all that lies within the scope Of holy faith and christian hope; Or, shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost."
"But hushed be every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things."
"True beauty dwells in deep retreats, Whose veil is unremoved Till heart with heart in concord beats, And the lover is beloved."
"Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!"
"Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart"
"Ocean is a mighty harmonist."
"These feeble and fastidious times."
"Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love."
"Small service is true service while it lasts. Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun."
"One solace yet remains for us who came Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth's heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact."
"How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold."
"Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive."
"Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory."
"There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat, Shaped like the crescent-moon."
"The common growth of Mother Earth Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears."
"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more."
"The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!"
"On a fair prospect some have looked, And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away."
"As if the man had fixed his face, In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open sky!"
"The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure ... Nor let this necessity ... be considered as a degradation of the Poet’s art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love; further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows and feels and lives and moves … Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science ... In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, — in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time ... Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge — it is as immortal as the heart of man."
"The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this."
"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."
"What is a Poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them."
"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."
"I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."
"All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them."
"From the sweet thoughts of home And from all hope I was forever hurled. For me—farthest from earthly port to roam Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come."
"And oft I thought (my fancy was-so strong) That I, at last, a resting-place had found: 'Here: will I dwell,' said I,' my whole life long, Roaming the illimitable waters round; Here will I live, of all but heaven disowned. And end my days upon the peaceful flood— To break my dream the vessel reached its bound; And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food."
"— A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?"
"In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind."
"Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?"
"The eye—it cannot choose but see; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where'er they be, against or with our will."
"Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness."
"Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."
"One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can."
"O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything."
"I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning."
"What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover's head! "O mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!""
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:"
"She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!"
"Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own.""
"A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees."
"The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!"
"And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind."
"A youth to whom was given So much of earth—so much of heaven, And such impetuous blood."
"My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard. Thus fares it still in our decay: And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind."
"Something between a hindrance and a help."
"Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
"May no rude hand deface it, And its forlorn Hic jacet!"
"Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance."
"————————Who he was That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod First covered, and here taught this aged Tree With its dark arms to form a circling bower, I well remember.—He was one who owned No common soul. In youth by science nursed. And led by nature into a wild scene Of lofty hopes, he to the world went forth A favoured Being, knowing no desire Which genius did not hallow; 'gainst the taint Of dissolute tongues, and jealousy, and hate, And scorn,—against all enemies prepared, All but neglect. The world, for so it thought, Owed him no service; wherefore he at once With indignation turned himself away, And with the food of pride sustained his soul In solitude."
"A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here An emblem of his own unfruitful life: And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze On the more distant scene,—how lovely 'tis Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time, When nature had subdued him to herself, Would he forget those Beings to whose minds, Warm from the labours of benevolence, The world and human life appeared a scene Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh, Inly disturbed, to think that others felt What he must never feel: and so, lost Man! On visionary views would fancy feed, Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale He died,—this seat his only monument."
"If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness; that he who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he has never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man whose eye Is ever on himself doth look on one, The least of Nature's works, one who might move The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou ! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love; True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart."
"Oh, be wise, Thou! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love."
"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."
"These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things."
"O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!"
"And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills;"
"For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was."
"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."
"That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. 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 recognise 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."
"Nor, perchance, If I were not thus taught, Should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings."
"If I should be, where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence, wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; And that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came, Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Now wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake."
"A fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave."
"A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All-in-all!"
"He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own."
"And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love."
"The harvest of a quiet eye, That broods and sleeps on his own heart."
"Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there One of a mighty multitude whose way Is a perpetual harmony and dance Magnificent."
"Is there not An art, a music, and a stream of words That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?"
"Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams — can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man."
"Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever."
"And stepping westward seemed to be A kind of heavenly destiny."
"I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more."
"A famous man is Robin Hood, The English ballad-singer's joy."
"Yet was Rob Roy as wise as brave; Forgive me if the phrase be strong;— A Poet worthy of Rob Roy Must scorn a timid song."
"Burn all the statutes and their shelves: They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves."
"The good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take, who have the power, And they should keep who can."
"The Eagle, he was lord above, And Rob was lord below."
"A brotherhood of venerable trees."
"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.""
"She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair, Like twilights too her dusky hair, But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn."
"A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles."
"And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine."
"The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command."
"I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils. Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
"Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way."
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
"A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company."
"That inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude."
"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!"
"A light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove."
"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."
"Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong."
"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!"
"Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be?"
"Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! Turns his necessity to glorious gain."
"Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives."
"More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress."
"But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover."
"And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw."
"Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray."
"As high as we have mounted in delight, In our dejection do we sink as low."
"But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?"
"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough, along the mountain-side: By our own spirits are we deified: We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."
"That heareth not the loud winds when they call, And moveth all together, if it moves at all."
"Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach Of ordinary men."
"And mighty poets in their misery dead."
"For the gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul."
"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."
"Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, Brought from a pensive though a happy place."
"He spake of love, such love as spirits feel In worlds whose course is equable and pure; No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,— The past unsighed for, and the future sure."
"Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner air, And fields invested with purpureal gleams."
"Yet tears to human suffering are due; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone."
"Babylon, Learned and wise, hath perished utterly, Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh That would lament her."
"As thou these ashes, little brook! will bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main ocean they, this deed accurst, An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed."
"Habit rules the unreflecting herd."
"The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an Angel's wing."
"Meek Walton's heavenly memory."
"But who would force the soul tilts with a straw Against a champion cased in adamant."
"Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more."
"Where music dwells Lingering and wandering on as loth to die, Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality."
"Oh for a single hour of that Dundee Who on that day the word of onset gave!"
"In years that bring the philosophic mind."
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
"Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on, Through words and things, a dim and perilous way."
"And 't is my faith, that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes."
"Up! up! my friend, and quit your books, Or surely you 'll grow double! Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks! Why all this toil and trouble?"
"The bane of all that dread the Devil."
"The fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart."
"Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach."
"As in the eye of Nature he has lived, So in the eye of Nature let him die!"
"Full twenty times was Peter feared, For once that Peter was respected."
"One of those heavenly days that cannot die."
"A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye; Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky."
"The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face."
"The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one!"
"Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,— Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me."
"Yet sometimes, when the secret cup Of still and serious thought went round, It seemed as if he drank it up, He felt with spirit so profound."
"A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free."
"And often, glad no more, We wear a face of joy because We have been glad of yore."
"Until a man might travel twelve stout miles, Or reap an acre of his neighbor's corn."
"And he is oft the wisest man Who is not wise at all."
"A jolly place," said he, "in times of old! But something ails it now: the spot is cursed."
"Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream."
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
"A noticeable man, with large gray eyes."
"We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted."
"The poet's darling."
"The best of what we do and are, Just God, forgive!"
"For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago."
"Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain That has been, and may be again."
"Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice; Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, Frozen by distance."
"Let beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow!"
"A remnant of uneasy light."
"To be a Prodigal's favourite,—then, worse truth, A Miser's pensioner,—behold our lot!"
"Maidens withering on the stalk."
"Sweetest melodies Are those that are by distance made more sweet."
"The gentle Lady married to the Moor, And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb."
"Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!— The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays."
"A power is passing from the earth."
"Earth helped him with the cry of blood."
"The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o'er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height."
""What is good for a bootless bene?" With these dark words begins my tale; And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring When prayer is of no avail?"
"But thou that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation."
"'T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind."
"We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud And magnify thy name Almighty God! But man is thy most awful instrument In working out a pure intent."
"Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness."
"The sightless Milton, with his hair Around his placid temples curled; And Shakespeare at his side,—a freight, If clay could think and mind were weight, For him who bore the world!"
"Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth."
"Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold."
"To the solid ground Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye."
"Soft is the music that would charm forever; The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly."
"A Briton even in love should be A subject, not a slave!"
"And when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains,—alas! too few."
"But he is risen, a later star of dawn."
"Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark."
"When his veering gait And every motion of his starry train Seem governed by a strain Of music, audible to him alone."
"Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!"
"Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound."
"The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift, That no philosophy can lift."
"Nature's old felicities."
"Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source, The rapt one, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth."
"How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!"
"Those old credulities, to Nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of history?"
"Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer."
"Faith is a passionate intuition"
"How blessings brighten as they take their flight!"
"Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd; He that hath none must make them, or be wretched."
"Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them."
"We take no note of time but from its loss."
"What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite."
"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."
"My poetry has a haunted sense to it and it has a sorrow and a grievingness in it that comes directly from being split, not in two but in twenty, and never being able to reconcile all the places that I am. I think of it as Wordsworth did when he said we come into this world "trailing clouds of glory," when he said nothing can bring back the hour when we saw "splendor in the grass and glory in the flower." We shall not weep but find strength in what remains behind. That poem-I was in college, I was a sophomore when I read it, and I just wept. I was completely, absolutely desolate because I thought he understood. He understood, of course, in his own way exactly what happens when your reality is so disordered that you can't ever make it whole, but you have the knowledge of what has happened, what has been done."
"I firmly believe that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakspeare and Milton, of which all the world now recognises the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time. Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot well be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll of our chief poetical names, besides Shakspeare and Milton, from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and going through it,—Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are dead),—I think it certain that Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, above them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and excellences which Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance of each as a whole, I say that Wordsworth seems to me to have left a body of poetical work superior in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, to that which any one of the others has left."
"I think it certain, further, that if we take the chief poetical names of the Continent since the death of Molière, and, omitting Goethe, confront the remaining names with that of Wordsworth, the result is the same. Let us take Klopstock, Lessing, Schiller, Uhland, Rückert, and Heine for Germany; Filicaia, Alfieri, Manzoni, and Leopardi for Italy; Racine, Boileau, Voltaire, André Chénier, Béranger, Lamartine, Musset, M. Victor Hugo...for France. Several of these, again, have evidently gifts and excellences to which Wordsworth can make no pretension. But in real poetical achievement it seems to me indubitable that to Wordsworth, here again, belongs the palm. It seems to me that Wordsworth has left behind him a body of poetical work which wears, and will wear, better on the whole than the performance of any one of these personages, so far more brilliant and celebrated, most of them, than the homely poet of Rydal. Wordsworth's performance in poetry is on the whole, in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, superior to theirs."
"The Excursion and the Prelude, his poems of greatest bulk, are by no means Wordsworth's best work. His best work is in his shorter pieces, and many indeed are there of these which are of first-rate excellence. But in his seven volumes the pieces of high merit are mingled with a mass of pieces very inferior to them; so inferior to them that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have produced both... Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some sixty years; and it is no exaggeration to say that within one single decade of those years, between 1798 and 1808, almost all his really first-rate work was produced. A mass of inferior work remains, work done before and after this golden prime, imbedding the first-rate work and clogging it, obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not unfrequently, the high-wrought mood with which we leave it."
"Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two causes: from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur. Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance... If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as Michael, The Fountain, The Highland Reaper."
"Dante, Shakspeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the moderns, we are to find his superiors."
"Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat."
"The languid way in which he gives you a handful of numb unresponsive fingers is very significant. It seems also rather to grieve him that you have any admiration for anybody but him. No man that I ever met has give me less, has disappointed me less. My peace be with him, and a happy evening to his, on the whole, respectable life."
"For Wordsworth, as for Burke, local attachment is "the tap-root of the tree of Patriotism". That was particularly true of the part of England from which Wordsworth himself came—the dales of Cumberland and Westmorland, with their tiny scattered communities of "statesmen" as they were called, small independent owner-farmers, soon, alas, to be driven out of existence as such by the increasing prosperity of the country. "Neither high-born nobleman, knight, nor esquire, was here; but many of these humble sons of the hills had a consciousness that the land, which they walked over and tilled, had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men of their name and blood." This is the environment out of which Wordsworth's political theory springs; and along with local patriotism it taught him the meaning of tradition in a nation's life. He draws his conclusions in phrases that wonderfully, and surely not accidentally, echo Burke. "There is a spiritual community binding together the living and the dead, the good, the brave, and the wise, of all ages." To Wordsworth, as to Burke, tradition is essential to a nation. How well he knew "the solemn fraternity which a great Nation composes—gathered together, in a stormy season, under the shade of ancestral feeling". He cries, as the shadow of Napoleon looms over his mind, "Perdition to the Tyrant who would wantonly cut off an independent nation from its inheritance in past ages"."
"He lived amidst th'untrodden ways To Rydal Lake that lead:- A bard whom there were none to praise, And very few to read.Behind a cloud his mystic sense, Deep-hidden, who can spy? Bright as the night, when not a star Is shining in the sky.Unread his works – his "Milk-white Doe" With dust is dark and dim; It's still in Longman's shop, and Oh! The difference to him!"
"Nothing struck me so much in Wordsworth's conversation as his remark concerning Chartism—after the subject of my imprisonment had been touched upon. "You were right," he said; "I have always said the people were right in what they asked; but you went the wrong way to get it." I almost doubted my ears—being in the presence of the "Tory" Wordsworth. He read the inquiring expression of my look in a moment,—and immediately repeated what he had said. "You were quite right: there is nothing unreasonable in your Charter: it is the foolish attempt at physical force, for which many of you have been blamable." I had heard that Wordsworth was vain and egotistical, but had always thought this very unlikely to be true, in one whose poetry is so profoundly reflective; and I now felt astonished that these reports should ever have been circulated. To me, he was all kindness and goodness; while the dignity with which he uttered every sentence seemed natural in a man whose grand head and face, if one had never known of his poetry, would have proclaimed his intellectual superiority."
"I am pleased to find," he said, while we were talking about Byron, "that you preserve your muse chaste, and free from rank and corrupt passion. Lord Byron degraded poetry in that respect. Men's hearts are bad enough. Poetry should refine and purify their natures; not make them worse." I ventured the plea that Don Juan was descriptive, and that Shakspeare had also described bad passions in anatomising the human heart, which was one of the great vocations of the poet. "But there is always a moral lesson," he replied quickly, "in Shakspeare's pictures. You feel he is not stirring man's passions for the sake of awakening the brute in them: the pure and the virtuous are always presented in high contrast; but the other riots in corrupt pictures, evidently with the enjoyment of the corruption."
"I left him with a more intense feeling of having been in the presence of a good and great intelligence, than I had ever felt in any other moments of my life."
"Lyrical Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A manifesto and a revolution in verse whose fallout is still being measured. The strongest single volume of poetry yet published?"
"There are very few days that I do not see the poet for an hour or two. What strange workings are there in his great mind, and how fearfully strong are all his feelings and affections! If his intellect had been less powerful they must have destroyed him long ago; but even in the midst of his strongest emotions his attention may be attracted to some intellectual speculation, or his imagination excited by some of those external objects which have such influence over him; and his feelings subside like the feelings of a child, and he will go out and compose some beautiful sonnet."
"As for the Poetry of Humble Life, that, even in a town, is met with on every hand. We have such a district, and we constantly meet with examples of the beautiful truth in that passage of The Cumberland Beggar."
"Wordsworth may be bordering on sixty; hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth and a few scattered grey hairs, but nevertheless not a disagreeable countenance; and very cheerful, merry, courteous, and talkative, much more so than I should have expected from the grave and didactic character of his writings. He held forth on poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics, and with a great deal of eloquence; he is more conversible and with a greater flow of animal spirits than Southey. He mentioned that he never wrote down as he composed, but composed walking, riding, or in bed, and wrote down after; that Southey always composes at his desk. He talked a great deal of Brougham, whose talents and domestic virtues he greatly admires; that he was very generous and affectionate in his disposition, full of duty and attention to his mother, and had adopted and provided for a whole family of his brother's children, and treats his wife's children as if they were his own."
"He is in this sense the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them; the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand them; the great despise. The fashionable may ridicule them: but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die."
"The Wordsworthians, as Matthew Arnold told them, were apt to praise their poet for the wrong things. They were most attracted by what may be called his philosophy; they accepted his belief in the morality of the universe and the tendency of events to good; they were even willing to entertain his conception of nature as a living and sentient and benignant being, a conception as purely mythological as the Dryads and the Naiads."
"You may have experienced this fundamental energy spontaneously, at some high point in your life. Wordsworth described it as: "A sense sublime/Of something far more deeply interfused,/Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,/And the round ocean and the living air,/And the blue sky, and in the mind of man...""
"I am convinced that there are three things to rejoice at in this Age—The Excursion, Your Pictures, and Hazlitt's depth of Taste."
"I should recall to your recollection him, (specially now as in this honourable circle which surrounds me he is himself present,) who of all poets, and above all has exhibited the manners, the pursuits, and the feelings, religious and traditional, of the poor,—I will not say in a favourable light merely, but in a light which glows with the rays of heaven. To his poetry, therefore, they should, I think, be now referred, who sincerely desire to understand and feel that secret harmonious intimacy which exists between honourable Poverty, and the severer Muses, sublime Philosophy, yea, even our most holy Religion."
"Wordsworth would have been very upset to know that his wonderful poems were being used as a weapon of empire. That is why, as soon as I had my own garden, I planted twenty thousand daffodils on the lawn. I was going to stop at ten, but they were just so beautiful that I kept going. It was, I suppose, my reconciliation with Wordsworth."
"He became an optimist on the day when he perceived reality."
"Wordsworth said "the child is father to the man" and that poetry is "emotion recalled in tranquility." I must say that he had something there although I wouldn't exactly put it in those same words. But poetry begins with the ability to recognize that you are feeling and to be able to re-create that feeling, to get in touch with it again. It isn't lost. To emote is not poetry. To emote is absolutely necessary, but that is not poetry. It's vital to recall the emotion that moved you and to see through it to the thrill out of which that emotion grew. Then you begin to make connections. It's the seeing through that enables you to begin making the images that connect with an experience different from yours. The magic that occurs with poetry is the ability to see through emotion."
"I purchased the poet's works, and, reading them, was converted to an enthusiastic love of his writings, ever after being eager to acknowledge my gratitude to him for having made me in some respects a wiser, and excited in me the aspiration to become a better man."
"I, deaf, can hardly conceive how he, with eyes & ears, & a heart wh[ich] leads him to converse with the poor in his incessant walks, can be so unaware of their moral state. I dare say you need not be told how sensual vice abounds in rural districts. Here it is flagrant beyond any thing I ever c[oul]d have looked for: & here, while every justice of the peace is filled with disgust, & every clergy[man] with (almost) despair at the drunkenness, quarrelling, & extreme licentiousness with women,—here is dear good old Wordsworth for ever talking of rural innocence, & deprecating any intercourse with towns, lest the purity of his neighbours should be corrupted. He little knows what elevation, self denial & refinement occur in towns from the superior cultivation of the people."
"I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in, the common feelings and common destiny of human beings."
"I also liked the Romantic poets. Wordsworth, Keats, Burns and Blake were some of my favourites. There was something about their rebellious spirit against the evils of industrialization that moved me. Of course now, some of their pessimism, mysticism and limited critical realist visions make me quite uncomfortable."
"Time-saving... became an important part of labor-saving. And as time was accumulated and put by, it was reinvested, like money capital, in new forms of exploitation. From now on filling time and killing time became important considerations: the early paleotechnic employers even stole time from their workers by blowing the factory whistle... earlier in the morning, or moving the hands of the clock... during lunch... Time was a commodity in the sense that money had become a commodity. Time as pure duration, time dedicated to contemplation and reverie, time divorced from mechanical operations, was treated as heinous waste. The paleotechnic world did not heed Wordsworth's Expostulation and Reply: it had no mind to sit on an old gray stone and dream its time away."
"But that which Wordsworth knew, even the old man When poetry had failed like desire, was something I have yet to learn, and you, Duddon, Have learned and re-learned to forget and forget again. Not the radical, the poet and heretic, To whom the water-forces shouted and the fells Were like a blackboard for the scrawls of God, But the old man, inarticulate and humble, Knew that eternity flows in a mountain beck."
"I think that poetry, in general, after a certain point in a poet's life, has to do with the acknowledgment of mortality. And even the most joyful poems have to do with, "Yes, let's not forget that life is brief." Once I started dealing with grief in poetry, I discovered that I had found my way to poetry. I think that so many young poets are only writing about the joy of love and that sort of thing and don't understand that the great poetry, like Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle" and like Wordsworth's "Intimations" and "Tintern Abby," has all been a moment when the poet realizes that "this is my time to express what I have gathered in this brief life.""
"He wasn't a man as was thowte a deal o' for his potry when he was hereabout. It hed no laugh in it same as Lile Hartley [Coleridge]'s, bided a deal o makkin I darsay. It was kept oer long in his heead mappen. But then for aw that, he had best eye to mountains and streams, and buildings in the daale, notished ivvry stean o' the fellside, and we nin on us durst bang a bowder stean a bit or cut a bit coppy or raase an old wa' doon when he was astir."
"I began seriously writing in a period (the 1950s to late 1960s) in American poetry that assumed extreme gender positioning-"the poet is a man speaking to men," as Wordsworth had put it even as he was trying to democratize English poetry."
"In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period he was called a "bad" man. Then he became "good", abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and wrote bad poetry."
"Wordsworth's attitude in the above lines, after he had liberated himself from the tenets of Godwinian social engineering, was diametrically opposite to the assumptions of some contemporary sociologists who summon faiths and passions to the bar of empirical investigation as an article of discipline; and possibly the only contemporary English political philosopher he might have sympathized with is Professor Michael Oakeshott, with his way of looking at political attitudes as a matter of men's habitual arrangements, and not either of theory or of scientific scrutiny. To say this is to recognize that as a severe critic and eloquent victim of liberal, utilitarian thought Wordsworth is still intellectually present to us in an age dominated by concepts of social engineering which are now invading the universities. He may not be a Dostoievsky, but we have not got a Dostoievsky, so we must make do with him as gad-fly to our liberal complacency."
"What a beastly and pitiful wretch that Wordsworth! That such a man should be such a poet! I can compare him with no one but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the most natural and tender of lyric poets."
"Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine."
"No poet has been more loved because none has expressed more forcibly and truly the deepest moral emotions."
"A certain clumsiness always remains; but in his earlier period he had the power of arresting simple thought with the magic of poetical inspiration. The great stimulus came from the French revolution. The sympathy which he felt with the supposed restoration of an idyllic order disappeared when it took the form of social disintegration. The growth of pauperism and the factory system, and the decay of old simple society, intensified the impression; and some of his noblest poems are devoted to celebrating the virtues which he took to be endangered. Wordsworth's love of ‘nature’ is partly an expression of the same feeling. He loved the mountains because they were the barriers which protected the peasant. He loved them also because they echoed his own most characteristic moods. His ‘mystical’ or pantheistic view of nature meant the delight of the lonely musings when he had to ‘grasp a tree’ to convince himself of the reality of the world. The love of nature was therefore the other side of his ‘egotism.’ He hated the scientific view which substituted mere matter of fact for emotional stimulus. The truth and power of his sentiment make this the most original and most purely poetical element in his writings. He could as little rival Coleridge and Shelley in soaring above the commonplace world as Byron or Burns in uttering the passions. But in his own domain, the expression of the deep and solemn emotions of a quiet recluse among simple people and impressive scenery, he is equally unsurpassable."
"Scott could make men breathe the breath of battle; Byron could only make men smell the reek of carnage; but Wordsworth alone could put into his verse the whole soul of a nation armed or arming for self-devoted self-defence; could fill his meditation with the spirit of a whole people, that in the act of giving it a voice and an expression he might inform and renovate that spirit with the purity and sublimity of his own."
"Wordsworth went to the lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there."
"Wisdom and spirit of the Universe! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought! And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion! Not in vain By day or star-light thus from by first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul, Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, But with high objects, with enduring things, With life and nature, purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying, by such discipline Both pain and fear, until we recognize A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.#"