William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads .
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.
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“Sweetest melodies
Are those that are by distance made more sweet.”
Personal Talk, Stanza 2.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery.”
To the Cuckoo, st. 4 (1804).
“The gentle Lady married to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.”
Personal Talk, Stanza 3.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)
“Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark.”
A Morning Exercise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
To Toussaint L'Ouverture, l. 12 (1807).
“Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?”
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines Written in Early Spring, st. 6 (1798).
“Earth helped him with the cry of blood.”
Song at the Feast of Broughton Castle.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great, is passed away.”
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 13 (1807).
Yarrow Unvisited.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant.”
Part III, No. 7 - Persecution of the Scottish Covenanters.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 1 (1807).
“A fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave.”
Stanza 5.
A Poet's Epitaph (1799)
To the Daisy (third poem), st. 1 (1803).
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, l. 11 (1802).
“A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free.”
The Fountain, st. ?? (1799).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Thoughts Suggested on the Banks of the Nith, st. 10.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)
“A power is passing from the earth.”
Source: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Lines on the expected Dissolution of Mr. Fox.
Lines (1795)
Stanza 6.
Resolution and Independence (1807)
Simon Lee, st. 12 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)
“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
Hart-leap Well, part ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Part II, No. 17 - Wicliffe. In obedience to the order of the Council of Constance (1415), the remains of Wickliffe were exhumed and burned to ashes, and these cast into the Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by; and "thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over", Thomas Fuller, Church History, section ii, book iv, paragraph 53; Compare also: "What Heraclitus would not laugh, or what Democritus would not weep?… For though they digged up his body, burned his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the word of God and truth of his doctrine, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn", Fox, Book of Martyrs, vol. i. p. 606 (edition, 1611); "Some prophet of that day said,—
"'The Avon to the Severn runs, / The Severn to the sea; / And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad / Wide as the waters be'", Daniel Webster, Address before the Sons of New Hampshire (1849), and similarly quoted by the Rev. John Cumming in the Voices of the Dead.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)
Stanza 2.
She Was a Phantom of Delight http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww259.html (1804)
Source: Character of the Happy Warrior http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww302.html (1806), Line 12.
To the Small Celandine.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)
“Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.”
Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)
Letter to Lady Beaumont (May 21, 1807).
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)
“That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it moves at all.”
Stanza 11.
Resolution and Independence (1807)
“But he is risen, a later star of dawn.”
A Morning Exercise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, l. 161 (1807).
“Turning, for them who pass, the common dust
Of servile opportunity to gold.”
Desultory Stanza.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company.”
Stanza 3.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804)
“Every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath.”
These Times strike Monied Worldlings.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath.
It Is a Beautious Evening, l. 12 (1807).
To a Butterfly (Stay Near Me), st. 1 (1801).
“Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?”
Source: Character of the Happy Warrior http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww302.html (1806), Line 1.
“How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!”
Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
