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
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
Thou unassuming common-place of Nature, with that homely face.
—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
The good die first; and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Death
The world is too must: with us; late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature, World
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Suffering
His high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Light
Laying out grounds may be considered a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Gardening
Wild is the music of autumnal winds the faded woods.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Autumn
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
From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Guilt
The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
—William Wordsworth
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Research
But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Age, Aging
Worldings revelling in the fields
Of strenuous idleness.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Idleness, One liners
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Childhood
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Water
The child is the father of the man.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children
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
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
The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Age, Aging
What is pride? A rocket that emulates the stars
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Pride
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
Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd.
—William Wordsworth
As high as we have mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sing as low.
—William Wordsworth
She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature
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
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, lie scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Charity
This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Cities, City Life
We live by admiration, hope and love.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Love
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