Quotes from book
Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry.

William Wordsworth photo

“Something between a hindrance and a help.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Michael. A Pastoral Poem, l. 189 (1800).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“What is a Poet?…He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs—in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

William Wordsworth photo

“Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines Written in Early Spring, st. 6 (1798).

William Wordsworth photo

“I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Simon Lee, st. 12 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“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 book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known, st. 7 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. 1 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. 3 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“But, whenever a portion of this facility we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest of him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that with is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of these passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produced, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Expostulation and Reply, st. 6 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 1.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

William Wordsworth photo

“All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

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

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Lucy Gray, or Solitude, st. 2 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“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."”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower, st. 1 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

“Drink, pretty creature, drink!”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

The Pet Lamb. A Pastoral, st. 1 (1800).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth photo

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

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Simon Lee, st. 9 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)