William Wordsworth

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.

There is One great society alone on earth: The noble living and the noble dead.

Those old credulities, to Nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock of history?

To begin, begin.

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.

What are fears but voices airy? Whispering harm where harm is not. And deluding the unwary till the fatal bolt is shot!

not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound, This solitary Tree! A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed.

One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave.

Poetry is most just to its divine origin, when it administers the comforts and breathes the thoughts of religion.

She hath smiles to earth unknown?smiles that with motion of their own do spread, and sink, and rise.

Something between a hindrance and a help.

'T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, and do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep no more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, the Winds come to me from the fields of sleep.

The good die first; and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.

The monumental pomp of age was with this goodly personage; a stature undepressed in size, unbent, which rather seemed to rise in open victory o'er the weight of seventy years, to loftier height.

The stars are mansions built by nature's hand, and, haply, there the spirits of the blest dwell, clothed in radiance, their immortal rest.

There neither is, nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep thy heritage, thou eye among the blind.

To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together-humble dependence and manly independence: humble dependence on God, and manly reliance on self.

unwearied in that service: rather say with warmer love, oh! With far deeper zeal of holier love. Now wilt thou then forget, that after many wanderings, many years of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, and this green pastoral landscape, were to me more dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide into a lover's head! "o mercy!" to myself i cried, "if lucy should be dead!"

Nature's old felicities.

Now, in this blank of things, a harmony, home-felt, and home-created,comes to heal that grief for which the senses still supply fresh food; for only then, when memory is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! Restrain those busy cares that would allay my pain; oh! Leave me to myself, nor let me feel the officious touch that makes me droop again.

Oft had I heard of Lucy Gray, and when I crossed the Wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary Child. No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew; she dwelt on a wide Moor, The sweetest Thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the Fawn at play, The Hare upon the Green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. 'To-night will be a stormy night, you to the Town must go, and take a lantern, Child, to light Your Mother thro' the snow.' 'That, Father! will I gladly do; 'tis scarcely afternoon -- The Minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the Moon.' At this the Father raised his hook and snapped a faggot-band; He plied his work, and Lucy took the lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe, with many a wanton stroke her feet disperse the powd'ry snow that rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time, She wandered up and down, and many a hill did Lucy climb But never reached the Town. The wretched Parents all that night went shouting far and wide; but there was neither sound nor sight to serve them for a guide. At day-break on a hill they stood that overlooked the Moor; and thence they saw the Bridge of Wood A furlong from their door. And now they homeward turned, and cried 'In Heaven we all shall meet!' When in the snow the Mother spied the print of Lucy's feet. Then downward from the steep hill's edge They tracked the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn-hedge, And by the long stone-wall; And then an open field they crossed, The marks were still the same; They tracked them on, nor ever lost, And to the Bridge they came. They followed from the snowy bank the footmarks, one by one, into the middle of the plank, and further there were none. Yet some maintain that to this day she is a living Child, that you may see sweet Lucy Gray upon the lonesome Wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, and never looks behind; and sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.