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
Oft in my way have I stood still, though but a casual passenger, so much I felt the awfulness of life.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Life
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.
—William Wordsworth
Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Wilderness, Light, Nature
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Suffering
Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Action
The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Aging, Age
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
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Research
Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Idleness
Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: God
The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
—William Wordsworth
From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Guilt
Miss not the occasion; by the fore lock take that subtle power, the never-halting time.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Opportunity
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 and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Birds
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, Harmony, Power
Poetry is most just to its divine origin, when it administers the comforts and breathes the thoughts of religion.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Poetry
Our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal silence.
—William Wordsworth
The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Flowers
Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
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.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Mind, The Mind
I traveled among unknown men, in lands beyond the sea; nor England! did I know till then what love I bore to thee.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Travel, Tourism
How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Brothers
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Water
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature
Sweetest melodies are those that are y distance made more sweet.
—William Wordsworth
Wisdom is oft times nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Wisdom
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children, Childhood, Youth
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, lie scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Charity
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses
A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children
Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd.
—William Wordsworth
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