''The still, sad music of humanity,''
''No fountain from its rocky cave E'er tripped with foot so free; She seemed as happy as a wave That dances on the sea.''
''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.''
''And mighty poets in their misery dead.''
''Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide; The Forms remains, the Function never dies;''
''Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither,''
''Caught by the spectacle my mind turned round As with the might of waters; an apt type This label seemed of the utmost we can know, Both of ourselves and of the universe; And, on the shape of that unmoving man, His steadfast face and sightless eyes, I gazed, As if admonished from another world.''
''Is there not An art, a music, and a stream of words That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?''
''When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed I had, my Country—am I to be blamed?''
''In verity, an independent world, Created out of pure intelligence.''
''He told of the Magnolia, spread High as a cloud, high over head! The Cypress and her spire; MOf flowers that with one scarlet gleam Cover a hundred leagues, and seem To set the hills on fire.''
''Imagination, which in truth Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason, in her most exalted mood.''
''Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing;''
''Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind;''
''And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.''
''Great men have been among us; hands that penn'd And tongues that utter'd wisdom—better none:''
''Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see In simple childhood something of the base On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel, That from thyself it comes, that thou must give, Else never canst receive. The days gone by Return upon me almost from the dawn Of life: the hiding-places of man's power Open; I would approach them, but they close.''
''Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;''
''where the Statue stood Of Newton, with his Prism and silent Face The marble index of a Mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.''
''Our destiny, our being's heart and home, Is with infinitude, and only there; With hope it is, hope that can never die,''
''And, when she took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea.''
''A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.''
''And open field, through which the pathway wound, And homeward led my steps. Magnificent The morning rose, in memorable pomp, Glorious as e'er I had beheld—in front, The sea lay laughing at a distance; near, The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;''
''the Mind of Man— My haunt, and the main region of my song.''
''Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her,''
''That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.''
''My apprehensions come in crowds; I dread the rustling of the grass; The very shadows of the clouds Have power to shake me as they pass:''
''It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.... They both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.''
''We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.''
''In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.''
''many and many a day he thither went, And never lifted up a single stone.''
''The wealthiest man among us is the best:''
''Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.''
''the wiser mind Mourns less for what Age takes away, Than what it leaves behind.''
''Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet;''
''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, or any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—''
''And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close''
''Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.''
''Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee; And was the safeguard of the West:''
''The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.''
''O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?''
''The child is father of the man.''
''The rapt One, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth.''
''From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;''
''With an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.''
''Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.''
''She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and oh, The difference to me!''
''One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.''
''There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain, or break the heart:''
''We wear a face of joy, because We have been glad of yore.''
''Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go?''
''Too blest with any one to pair; Thyself thy own enjoyment.''
''I heard among the solitary hills Low breathings coming after me,''
''Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar:''
''We murder to dissect.''
''And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.''
''Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee:''
''As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.''
''In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is:''
''Scorn not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart;''
''One of those heavenly days that cannot die;''
''On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing is solitude,''
''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;''
''Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam— True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!''
''Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;''
''And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.''
''Not in Utopia,—subterranean Fields,— Or some secreted Island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,—the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!''
''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,''
''No master spirit, no determined road; But equally a want of books and men!''
''the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,''
''I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.''
''though mean Our object and inglorious, yet the end Was not ignoble.''
''Breathing with such suppression of the heart As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint''
''The good die first And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket.''
''In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure, The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air.''
''The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.''
''Where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.''
''Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass!''
''let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound!''
''The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:''
''And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state;''
''Where art thou, my beloved Son, Where art thou, worse to me than dead?''
''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.''
''I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated Spirit.''
''The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone;''
''Have I not reason to lament What Man has made of Man?''
''Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies; There's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind.''
''O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in every thing.''
''Flowers laugh before thee upon 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.''
''Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty city is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity, by differences That have no law, no meaning, and no end—''
''Strange fits of passion have I known:''
''Mark the babe Not long accustomed to this breathing world; One that hath barely learned to shape a smile, Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp With tiny finger—to let fall a tear; And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves, To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem, The outward functions of intelligent man.''
''Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy.''
''There are in our existence spots of time,''
''The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.''
''Knowledge and increase of enduring joy From the great Nature that exists in works Of mighty Poets.''
''Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach Of ordinary men; a stately speech; Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,''
''The darkest pit Of the profoundest hell, chaos, night, Nor aught of blinder vacancy scooped out By help of dreams can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our minds, into the mind of man.''
''Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?''
''Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be? It is the generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: Whose high endeavors 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; And in himself posses his own desire;''
''Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind''
''I am already kindly disposed towards you. My friendship it is not in my power to give: this is a gift which no man can make, it is not in our own power: a sound and healthy friendship is the growth of time and circumstance, it will spring up and thrive like a wildflower when these favour, and when they do not, it is in vain to look for it.''
''So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.''
''For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. MI, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation—''
''Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there, One of a mighty multitude whose way And motion is a harmony and dance Magnificent.''
''A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.''
'''How is it that you live, and what is it you do?'''
''Will no one tell me what she sings?— Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago:''
''I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roam'd Delighted, through the motley spectacle; Gowns grave or gaudy, Doctors, Students, Streets, Lamps, Gateways, Flocks of Churches, Courts and Towers:''
''The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose,''
''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;''
''Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.''
''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.''
''A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?''
''To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.''
''Neither evil tongues, Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us.''
''feelings too Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps, As may have had no trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.''
''That blessed mood In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened.''
''Thou unassuming common-place Of Nature, with that homely face.''
''Or hast been summoned to the deep, Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep An incommunicable sleep.''
''The good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take, who have the power, And they should keep who can.''
''Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!''
''The power, which all Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus To bodily sense exhibits, is the express Resemblance of that glorious faculty That higher minds bear with them as their own.''
''my brain Worked with a dim and undetermined sense Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude Or blank desertion.''
'''Twill soothe us in our sorrow That earth has something yet to show, The bonny holms of Yarrow!'''
''Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?''
''The glory and the freshness of a dream.''
''The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.''
''he had been alone Amid the heart of many thousand mists,''
''I should need Colours and words that are unknown to man, To paint the visionary dreariness''
''The horse is taught his manage, and no star Of wildest course but treads back his own steps;''
''A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.''
''My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:''
''The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction.''
''For by superior energies; more strict Affiance in each other; faith more firm In their unhallowed principles, the bad Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak, The vacillating, inconsistent good.''
''The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions.''
''But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?''
''Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear:''
''A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.''
''The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;''
''The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream;''
''And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.''
''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.''
''That best portion of a good man's life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.''
''To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.''
''With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake.''
''The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—''
''something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,''
''Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great, is passed away.''
''Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke,''
''Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel; the land Shall not go from us, and it shall be free; He shall possess it, free as is the wind That passes over it.''
''The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.''
''Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, Like London with its own black wreath,''
''It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration;''
''They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.''
''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.''
''the soul, Remembering how she felt, but what she felt Remembering not, retains an obscure sense Of possible sublimity,''
''could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time.''
''Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!''
''What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a Lover's head! 'O mercy!' to myself I cried, 'If Lucy should be dead!'''
''Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love, Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove;''
''Instruct them how the mind of Man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells,''
''Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.''
''To me alone there came a thought of grief; A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong:''
''Careless of books, yet having felt the power Of Nature, by the gentle agency Of natural objects, led me on to feel For passions that were not my own, and think (At random and imperfectly indeed) On man, the heart of man, and human life.''
''We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.''
''Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!''
''But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave.''
''Hearing often-times The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.''
''Among the Indians he had fought; And with him many tales he brought Of pleasure and of fear; Such tales as told to any Maid By such a Youth, in the green shade, Were perilous to hear.''
''A day Spent in a round of strenuous idleness.''
''—I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.''
''Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!''
''Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!''
''I traveled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.''
''She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.''
''She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament;''
''All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.''
''A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.''
''I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.''
''Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.''
''Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely-calculated less or more.''
''No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor, MThe sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!''
''The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.''
''some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;''
''Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—''
''Two voices are there; one is of the Sea, One of the Mountains; each a mighty Voice: In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen Music, Liberty!''
''in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.''
'''But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!' 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little maid would have her will, And said, 'Nay, we are seven!'''
''O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live,''
''For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity.''
''And fade into the light of common day.''
''that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened:—''
''The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one!''
''One great Society alone on Earth, The noble Living, and the noble Dead.''
''A work which is not here: a covenant 'Twill be between us; but, whatever fate Befal thee, I shall love thee to the last, And bear thy memory with me to the grave."''
''What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind.''
''Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.''
''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.''
''The things which I have seen I now can see no more.''
''Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated,''
''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.''
