Wordsworthiana: a Selection from Papers Read to the Wordsworth Society |
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Common terms and phrases
ALFRED AINGER artist beauty bird characteristic Charles Lamb Chaucer Coleridge colour conscious criticism deal delight diction divine earth eternal Excursion expression faculties fancy feeling felt fond Grasmere harmony Hartley Coleridge Haydon heard heart heaven Henry Crabb Robinson honour human imagination intellect interest Lake Lamb Laodamia less li'le Hartley living look Matthew Arnold mind mood moral mountain murmuring mystery Nature never niver nowt painted paper passage passing passion perhaps Pickersgill picture Plato poems poet poet's poetic poetry portrait of Wordsworth possession President Professor prose R. H. Hutton Rydal Mount scene seems sense Shelley sonnet soul sound speak spirit Stopford Brooke style sympathy tells Theism things thought Tintern Abbey tion transcendent true truth verse voice walk William Wordsworth Words Wordsworth Society Wordsworth's poetry worth writes Wudsworth ye kna youth
Popular passages
Page 331 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face, You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 193 - It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea. Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly.
Page 206 - I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for murmurings from within Were heard, sonorous cadences ! whereby, To his belief, the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea.
Page 76 - Be taught, O faithful Consort, to control Rebellious passion ; for the Gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul ; A fervent, not ungovernable, love.
Page 271 - Form remains, the Function never dies; While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish; - be it so! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.
Page 237 - The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round. And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
Page 300 - I felt the sentiment of Being spread O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still ; O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought And human knowledge, to the human eye Invisible, yet liveth to the heart...
Page 295 - Of unknown modes of being ; o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes Eemained, no pleasant images of trees, Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields ; But huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
Page 304 - Wisdom and spirit of the universe ! Thou soul that art the eternity of thought, That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul ; Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, But with high objects ; with enduring things, With...
Page 74 - 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.