The poetical works of Wordsworth, with memoir, notes etc

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Page 295 - Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
Page 142 - 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. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will:...
Page 86 - Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents ; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake.
Page 116 - To me was all in all. I cannot paint What then I was. 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 had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 41 - She dwelt among the untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! — Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be: But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me...
Page 20 - 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.
Page 275 - Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought : Whose high endeavours are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn ; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care...
Page 103 - As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Couched on the bald top of an eminence; Wonder to all who do the same espy, By what means it could thither come, and whence; So that it seems a thing endued with sense: Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself...
Page 136 - Blessings be with them and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays ! Oh ! might my name be numbered among theirs, Then gladly would I end my mortal days.
Page 116 - My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh ! yet a little while May I behold...

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