William Wordsworth cytaty

strona 10

„Najlepsza część życia ludzkiego to małe, bezimienne i zapomniane akty dobroci i miłości.”

„Sam wędrowałem, jak obłoczek
Często sam płynie przez przestworza,
Gdy nagle widok mnie zaskoczył
Złotych żonkili tłumu, morza;
Od wód jeziora aż po drzewa
Tańczyły – wiatr im w takt powiewał.”

„Poezja bierze początek ze wzruszenia rozpamiętywanego w spokoju.”

„Gdzie stał posąg Newtona, z pryzmatem, w milczeniu. Marmurowy pomnik umysłu, zawsze samotnie podróżującego przez dziwne morza myśli.”

„Nasze narodziny nie są niczym innym niż snem i zapomnieniem.”

„Każda dobra poezja jest spontanicznym wybuchem głębokich uczuć.”

„Podążaj naprzód, do światła rzeczy, pozwól naturze być twoim nauczycielem.”

“The harvest of a quiet eye,
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.”

“Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.”

“I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”

“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
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.”

“But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover.”

“More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress.”

“Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!”

“And he is oft the wisest man
Who is not wise at all.”

“As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!”

“The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!”

“Pleasures newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet.”

“Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own."”

“Drink, pretty creature, drink!”

“Brothers all
In honour, as in one community,
Scholars and gentlemen.”

“He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.”

“Rapine, avarice, expense
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.”

“O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.”

“Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives.”

“And mighty poets in their misery dead.”

“The poet's darling.”

“Nature's old felicities.”

“Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.”

“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.”

“Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!”

“From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.
For me—farthest from earthly port to roam
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.”

“That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. 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;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

“And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills;”

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

“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.”