William Wordsworth

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

The harvest of a quiet eye, That with the bar of discipline doth bind The senses from all wandering.

One who was reading in her humble dwelling Dora, poor violet, languished on the wall.

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

Dear God! the very children at thy open door Sing psalms of praise to 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 best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love.

In letters, words, and pentameters, we think we are free, and see what we are not.

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

The statue stood Of Newton, with his prism, and silent face: The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven! 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, 'Nay, we are seven!'

There was a Boy, ye knew him well, ye Cliffs And Islands of Winander!

The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of water-falls, And every thing that has a name.

I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused.

And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass!

Turning to love's sweet power, I call on thee, Thou who didst first infuse into my breast The holy soul of music.