"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."

"A youth to whom was given So much of earth—so much of heaven, And such impetuous blood."

"And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind."

"The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!"

"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."

"She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!"

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:"

"What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover's head! "O mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!""

"I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning."

"O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything."

"One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can."

"Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."

"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."

"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."

"Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?"

"In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind."

"— A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?"

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them."

"I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"May no rude hand deface it, And its forlorn Hic jacet!"

"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."

"As if the man had fixed his face, In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open 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."

"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."

"The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!"

"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more."

"The common growth of Mother Earth Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears."

"O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!"

"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."

"Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory."

"Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All-in-all!"

"These feeble and fastidious times."

"Ocean is a mighty harmonist."

"Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart"

"Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!"