Quotes from William Wordsworth

He is by nature led To peace so perfect that the young behold With envy, what the old man hardly feels.

The Flower that smells the sweetest is Shy and Lowly.

From heart-experience, and in humblest sense Of Modesty, that he, who in his youth A daily wanderer among woods and fields With living Nature hath been intimate, Not only in that raw unpractised time Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are, By glittering verse but further, doth receive, In measure only dealt out to himself, Knowledge and increase of enduring joy From the great Nature that exists in works Of mighty Poets.

The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem. - Beclouded

The pleasure-house is dust:—behind, before, This is no common waste, no common gloom; But Nature, in due course of time, once more Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. She leaves these objects to a slow decay, That what we are, and have been, may be known; But at the coming of the milder day, These monuments shall all be overgrown.

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

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...

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

A perfect Woman; nobly plann'd,   To warn, to comfort, and command;   And yet a Spirit still, and bright   With something of an angel light.

One Lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, Taught both by what she shews, and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration.

If living sympathy be theirs And leaves and airs, The piping breeze and dancing tree Are all alive and glad as we: Whether this be truth or no I cannot tell, I do not know; Nay--whether now I reason well, I do not know, I cannot tell.

This son of his old age was yet more dear— Less from instinctive tenderness, the same Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all— 145 Than that a child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature needs must fail.

Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

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, Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee

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.

The happy Warrior... is the generous Spirit, who, when brought among the tasks of real life, hath wrought upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: whose high endeavors are an inward light that makes the path before him always bright.

could have laugh'd myself to scorn, to find   In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.

the stately and slow-moving Turk, With freight of slippers piled beneath his arm.

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Ere we had reach'd the wish'd-for place, night fell:   We were too late at least by one dark hour

Before me begging did she stand,     Pouring out sorrows like a sea;     Grief after grief:—on English Land     Such woes I knew could never be;     And yet a boon I gave her; for the Creature   Was beautiful to see; a Weed of glorious feature!

Such seem'd this Man, not all alive nor dead,   Nor all asleep; in his extreme old age:   His body was bent double, feet and head   Coming together in their pilgrimage;   As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage   Of sickness felt by him in times long past,   A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

Said I, "Not half an hour ago     Your Mother has had alms of mine.