William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was one of Britain’s most eminent poets. He was a major poet of the Romantic Movement and was appointed England’s Poet Laureate in 1843. Wordsworth is recognized for his lyrical style of poetry, which was inspired by the landscape of the Lake District, where he spent much of his life. His best work is such poems as “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (also commonly known as “Daffodils,”) “The Ruined Cottage,” “Michael,” “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” and “The Solitary Reaper.”
Born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, Wordsworth graduated from Cambridge and then traveled to Europe. During the French Revolution, he left a young family behind in France and returned to England. He settled in with his beloved sister and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Wordsworth and Coleridge took long walks together in the Lake District, expounding about philosophy and English poetry, which they believed was too precise and prudish and did not appeal to the ordinary person. Together they wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798) in which they wrote poetry in everyday speech. First published without the names of the authors, the poems were greeted with resentment by most critics, but Lyrical Ballads arguably defined the Romantic Movement.
Wordsworth’s major work was his autobiographical poem The Prelude “containing views of Man, Nature, and Society.” Completed in 1805, he continued to revise it. It was published after his death.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Wordsworth
Poetry is most just to its divine origin, when it administers the comforts and breathes the thoughts of religion.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Poetry
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.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Drugs
The stars are mansions built by nature’s hand, and, haply, there the spirits of the blest dwell, clothed in radiance, their immortal rest.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Stars
For I have learned
To look on the 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 of sublime
Of something far more deeply infused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the minds of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All living 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 they perceive, will be 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.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Wilderness, Music, Nature
The good die first; and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Death
The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benedictions.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Remembrance
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and comet from afar: not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Birth
Thou unassuming common-place of Nature, with that homely face.
—William Wordsworth
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.
—William Wordsworth
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.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Writers
True dignity abides with him only, who, in the silent hour of inward thought, can still suspect, and still revere himself, in lowliness of heart.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Humility, Dignity
That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: The Past, Past
The Solitary answered: Such a Form
Full well I recollect. We often crossed
Each other’s path; but, as the Intruder seemed
Fondly to prize the silence which he kept,
And I as willingly did cherish mine,
We met, and passed, like shadows. I have heard,
From my good Host, that being crazed in brain
By unrequited love, he scaled the rocks,
Dived into caves, and pierced the matted woods,
In hope to find some virtuous herb of power
To cure his malady!
—William Wordsworth
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children, Youth, Childhood
That blessed mood in which the burthen of the mystery, in which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world is lightened.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Contentment
The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
—William Wordsworth
To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together – humble dependence and manly independence: humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Self-reliance, Independence
Whether we be young or old, our destiny, our being’s heart and 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.
—William Wordsworth
Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature, Light, Wilderness
No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled around in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Dying, Death
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Research
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Writing
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.
—William Wordsworth
When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign in solitude.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Solitude
That best portion of a good man’s life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Deeds, Kindness, Good Deeds, Goodness
She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature
Wisdom is oft times nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Wisdom
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature
As high as we have mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sing as low.
—William Wordsworth
The child is the father of the man.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children
The harvest of a quiet eye, That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Eyes
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, lie scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Charity
The poet’s darling.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Flowers
Mark the babe not long accustomed to this breathing world; One that hath barely learned to shape a smile, though yet irrational of soul, to grasp with tiny finger—to let fall a tear; And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves, To stretch his limbs, becoming, as might seem. The outward functions of intelligent man.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Babies
With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Thought, Power, Harmony
From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Guilt
One with more of soul in his face than words on his tongue.
—William Wordsworth
A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Water
But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Age, Aging
Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: God
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