Quotes
Quotes - Wordsworth
But shapes that come not at an earthly call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
But thou that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.
'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.
We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud
And magnify thy name Almighty God!
But man is thy most awful instrument
In working out a pure intent.
Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.
That kill the bloom before its time,
And blanch, without the owner's crime,
The most resplendent hair.
The sightless Milton, with his hair
Around his placid temples curled;
And Shakespeare at his side,--a freight,
If clay could think and mind were weight,
For him who bore the world!
Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows
That for oblivion take their daily birth
From all the fuming vanities of earth.
Turning, for them who pass, the common dust
Of servile opportunity to gold.
Babylon,
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,
Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh
That would lament her.
As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main ocean they, this deed accursed
An emblem yields to friends and enemies
How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed.
The feather, whence the pen
Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men,
Dropped from an angel's wing.
Meek Walton's heavenly memory.
But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant.
Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die,
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
Or shipwrecked, kindles on the coast
False fires, that others may be lost.
But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things.
To the solid ground
Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.
Soft is the music that would charm forever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.
Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.
A Briton even in love should be
A subject, not a slave!
Scorn not the sonnet. Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.
And when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,--alas! too few.
But he is risen, a later star of dawn.
