Wordsworth selected poems

• Description for a castle: “Skeleton of unfleshed humanity”
• “Glittering like a brook.”
• “high Heaven rejects the lore / Of nicely-calculated less or more;”
• “…on a mountain height / Loose vapours have I watched that won / Prismatic colours from the sun…”
• “More skilled in self-knowledge, even more pure / As tempted more; more able to endure / As more exposed to suffering and distress / Thence, also, more alive to tenderness”
• “Gurgling rills” - rill: a small stream (noun) or trickle (verb)

• “Few are his pleasures: if his eyes have now Been doomed so long to settle upon earth, That not without some effort they behold The countenance of the horizontal sun, Rising or setting, let the light at least Find a free entrance to their languid orbs”

• Where’er the aged Beggar takes his rounds,

“The mild necessity of use compels To acts of love; and habit does the work 0 Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul, By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued, Doth find herself insensibly disposed To virtue and true goodness. Some there are, By their good works exalted, lofty minds And meditative, authors of delight And happiness, which to the end of time Will live, and spread, and kindle”

To a Sky-Lark

… Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life’s day is done

The Green Linnet

…

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perched in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over.

My dazzled sight he oft deceives, A brother of the dancing leaves; Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves Pours forth his song in gushes; As if by that exulting strain He mocked and treated with disdain The voiceless Form he chose to feign, While fluttering in the bushes.

• Perched in ecstasies, yet seeming still to hover. Sunny glimmerings. Catches the calm vibrating vibrancy of nature
• Pours forth his song in gushes… ah..
• The voiceless form he chose to feign…likely passing humans or larger animals, silent looming shadows, voiceless Forms.

Yew-trees

… Huge trunks!—and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved,— …

The Inward Eye

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

Resolution and Independence

There was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright; The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

All things that love the sun are out of doors; The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth; The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors The hare is running races in her mirth; And with her feet she from the plashy earth Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. …

Mountain Echo

Yes, it was the mountain Echo, Solitary, clear, profound, Answering to the shouting Cuckoo, Giving to her sound for sound!

Unsolicited reply To a babbling wanderer sent; Like her ordinary cry, Like—but oh, how different!

Hears not also mortal Life? Hear not we, unthinking Creatures! Slaves of folly, love, or strife— Voices of two different natures?

Have not ‘we’ too?—yes, we have Answers, and we know not whence; Echoes from beyond the grave, Recognised intelligence!

Such rebounds our inward ear Catches sometimes from afar— Listen, ponder, hold them dear; For of God,—of God they are.

Devotional Incitements

Long but good

To a Brook

… It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee With purer robes than those of flesh and blood, And hath bestowed on thee a safer good; Unwearied joy, and life without its cares.

Expostulation and Reply

Why, William, on that old gray stone, Thus for the length of half a day, Why, William, sit you thus alone, And dream your time away?

“Where are your books? — that light bequeathed To Beings else forlorn and blind! Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed From dead men to their kind.

“You look round on your Mother Earth, As if she for no purpose bore you; As if you were her first-born birth, And none had lived before you!”

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, When life was sweet, I knew not why, To me my good friend Matthew spake, And thus I made reply:—

“The eye — it cannot choose but see; We cannot bid the ear be still; Our bodies feel, where’er they be, Against or with our will.

“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.

“Think you, ‘mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That nothing of itself will come But we must still be seeking?

“Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old gray stone, And dream my time away.”

Yarrow Revisited

…

Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, Their dignity installing In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough, or falling; But breezes played, and sunshine gleamed- The forest to embolden; Reddened the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through the golden.

For busy thoughts the Stream flowed on In foamy agitation; And slept in many a crystal pool For quiet contemplation: No public and no private care The freeborn mind enthralling, We made a day of happy hours, Our happy days recalling. …

The Tables Turned

… Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.

The Fountain

… And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind …

• Ah… agency. Choosing to let it go rather than have it ripped out of your hands. Still sorrowful, still a loss, but a more personal and meaningful one.

A poet’s epitaph

… A Moralist perchance appears; Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod: And he has neither eyes nor ears; Himself his world, and his own God;

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling Nor form, nor feeling, great or small; A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All-in-all!

Shut close the door; press down the latch; Sleep in thy intellectual crust; Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch Near this unprofitable dust.

But who is He, with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown? He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noon-day grove; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth, Of hill and valley, he has viewed; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie Some random truths he can impart,— The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart.