William Wordsworth
But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for humankind, Is happy as a lover.Collection: Happiness
Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness.Collection: Happiness
A simple child. That lightly draws its breath. And feels its life in every limb. What should it know of death?Collection: Life
A light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove.Collection: Light
If the time should ever come when what is now called Science, thus famliarised 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 the aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.Collection: Men
A lawyer art thou? Draw not nigh! Go, carry to some fitter place The keenness of that practised eye, The hardness of that sallow face.Collection: Art
Free as a bird to settle where I will.Collection: Bird
Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take that subtle power, the never-halting time.Collection: Opportunity
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.Collection: Lonely
Me this uncharted 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.Collection: Names
The wind, a sightless laborer, whistles at his task.Collection: Wind
Truth takes no account of centuries.Collection: Truth
Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth.Collection: Nature
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, wherever nature led.Collection: Lonely
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect.Collection: Sweet
Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.Collection: Romance
The clouds that gather round the setting sun do take a sober colouring from an eye that hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, to me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.Collection: Lying
Long as there's a sun that sets, Primroses will have their glory; Long as there are violets, They will have a place in story: There's a flower that shall be mine, 'Tis the little Celandine.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Passion
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.Collection: Christian
Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises.Collection: Lilies
The fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Dream
...one interior life in which all beings live with God, themselves are God, existing in the mighty whole, indistinguishable as the cloudless east is from the cloudless west, when all the hemisphere is one cerulean blue.Collection: God
Oft on the dappled turf at ease I sit, and play with similes, Loose type of things through all degrees.Collection: Play
Here must thou be, O man, Strength to thyself - no helper hast thou here - Here keepest thou thy individual state: No other can divide with thee this work, No secondary hand can intervene To fashion this ability. 'Tis thine, The prime and vital principle is thine In the recesses of thy nature, far From any reach of outward fellowship, Else 'tis not thine at all.Collection: Fashion
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.Collection: Years
I look for ghosts; but none will force Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse Between the living and the dead.Collection: Looks
Private courts, Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, May then entangle our impatient steps; Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, To privileged regions and inviolate, Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.Collection: Garden
For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitudeCollection: Lying
The silence that is in the starry sky, / The sleep that is among the lonely hills.Collection: Lonely
Choice word and measured phrase above the reach Of ordinary men.Collection: Men
Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains: each a mighty Voice.Collection: Sea
The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.Collection: Sunshine
Sweetest melodies.Are those that are by distance made more sweet.Collection: Music
Meek Walton's heavenly memory.Collection: Memories
Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach.Collection: Men
Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.Collection: Wise
Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.Collection: Lonely
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven.Collection: Heaven
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.Collection: Kindness