William Wordsworth: Quotes about heart

William Wordsworth was English Romantic poet. Explore interesting quotes on heart.
William Wordsworth: 612   quotes 36   likes

“The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Source: The Prelude

Way , Heart

“O be wiser, thou !
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.”

William Wordsworth

Lines (1795)
Context: If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.

Love , Knowledge , Heart

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

William Wordsworth

Scorn Not the Sonnet, l. 1 (1827).

Heart

“I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.”

William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

The Solitary Reaper, st. 4.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

Music , Heart

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

William Wordsworth The World Is Too Much with Us

The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 1 (1806).

World , Nature , Heart

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

William Wordsworth

Source: Great Narrative Poems Of The Romantic Age

Music , Heart

“There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.”

William Wordsworth
Love , Heart

“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky”

William Wordsworth

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802)
The last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.
Context: My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Heart

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

William Wordsworth

Source: Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

Lie , Fear , Flowers , Tear

“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 book The Prelude

Bk. VI, l. 603.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Hope , Home , Effort , Heart

“The fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.”

William Wordsworth

Source: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Lines completed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

World , Heart

“True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.”

William Wordsworth

To ____ . (Let other Bards of Angels sing), st. 3 (1824).

Beauty , Lovers , Heart

“A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem of his own unfruitful life:
And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze
On the more distant scene,—how lovely 'tis
Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time,
When nature had subdued him to herself,
Would he forget those Beings to whose minds,
Warm from the labours of benevolence,
The world and human life appeared a scene
Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh,
Inly disturbed, to think that others felt
What he must never feel: and so, lost Man!
On visionary views would fancy feed,
Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale
He died,—this seat his only monument.”

William Wordsworth

Lines (1795)

Love , Life , Pleasure , World

“The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart; he never felt
The witchery of the soft blue sky!”

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Part I, stanza 15.
Peter Bell (1798)

Heart

“My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

The Fountain, st. 8 & 9 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Age , Tear , Heart