William Wordsworth

“ Could it within the human flower be seen,
⁠Rememb"'ring still it's former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;
⁠And recollecting its own light,
Does in its pure and circling thoughts express
The greater heaven in an heaven less. ”

“ O King of Terrors! whose unbounded sway
All that have life, must certainly obey;
The king, the priest, the prophet, all are thine,
Nor would even God (in flesh) thy stroke decline.
My name is on thy roll, and sure I must
Encrease thy gloomy kingdom in the dust. ”

“ The throne of nations, fall'n! obscured in dust;
Even yet niajestical: the solemn scene
Elates the soul, while now the rising sun
Flames on the ruins in the purer air
Towering aloft upon the glittering plain.
Like broken rocks, a vast circumference!
Rent palaces, crushed columns, rifled moles.
Fanes roll'd on fanes, and tombs on buried tombs! ”

“ Unshaken by revolts, and owns no less desires.
But all in vain are prayers extatic thoughts,⁠20
Recovered moments, and retracted faults,
Retirement, which the world moroseness calls,
Abandoned pleasures in monastic walls:
These, but at distance towards that purpose tend,
The lowly means to an exalted end;
Which He must perfect who allots her stay
And that, accomplish'd, will direct the way.
Pity her restless cares, and weary strife,
And point some issue to escaping life ”

“ Thou art the grave where buried love doth live
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,⁠10
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
⁠Their images I lov'd I view in thee
⁠And thou (all they) hast all the all of me. ”

“ Cannot one gentle moment rest,
⁠Unless it knows what's done in your's.
In vain I ask it of your eyes,
⁠Which subtly would my fears control;
For art has taught them to disguise,
⁠Which nature made to explain the soul. ”

“ Bars to my sight, and shadows to my love!
Yet were it granted, such unbounded things
Are wand'ring wishes born on fancy's wings,
They'd stretch themselves beyond this happiness,
And ask an art, to help us to embrace. ”

“ From avarice and ambition free
⁠And pleasure's fatal wiles?
For whom, alas! dost thou prepare,⁠10
The sweets which I was wont to share
⁠The banquet of thy smiles.
The great, the gay, shall they partake
The heaven that thou alone canst make? ”

“ Each evening till a noble youth, who loves
My shade, a while relieved from public cares,
Yon peaceful gate shall enter, and sit down
Beneath my branches. Then his musing mind⁠20
I prompt, unseen; and place before his view
Sincerest forms of good; and move his heart
With the dread bounties of the Sire Supreme
Of gods and men, with freedoms generous deeds. ”

“ Ah! Friend! ambition's prospects close.
And studious of your own repose
⁠Be thankful here to live;
For, trust me, one protecting shed⁠10
And nightly peace, and daily bread,
⁠Is all that life can give
Langhorne. ”

“ And nuptial pomp, which lured her plighted faith
From Edmund to a loftier husband's home,⁠21
Relieve her breaking heart, or turn aside
The strokes of death. Go Traveller; relate
The mournful story. Haply some fair maid
May hold it in remembrance, and be taught
That riches cannot pay for truth and love. ”

“ These Parnassian 'riflings' elucidate the Sonnet to the Lady Mary Lowther in an exceptionally satisfactory way.
The Parnassian ore may be only 'mildly gleaming,' not of the richest quality perhaps; but the true metal is there; the sparkle is of gold, not of any baser material. The poet has assayed it and can vouch for its genuineness and purity.
The tests that Wordsworth applied to poetry are well known, and need not be recapitulated; but Lady Winchelsea—therein differing from the artificial verse-writers of the eighteenth century—seemed to him to fulfil one of them to an exceptional degree. ”

“ Sure never Hybla's bees rov'd through a wild so sweet.
⁠As winds the streamlet serpentine along,
⁠So leads a solemn walk its bowery way,
⁠The pale-leaved palms and darker limes among.
⁠To where a grotto lone and secret lay;
⁠The yellow broom, where chirp the linnets gay.
⁠Waves round the cave; and to the blue-streaked skies
⁠A shattered rock towers up in fragments grey:
⁠The she-goat from its height the landscape eyes. ”

“ So have they spent themselves; and here they lie,
A famous mark of our Discovery.
We that survive, perchance may end our days
In some employment meriting no praise,
And in a dunghill rot, when no man names
The memory of us but to our shames.
They have outlived this fear, and their brave ends
Will ever be an honor to their friends.—⁠20
Why drop you so mine eyes? Nay rather pour
My sad departure in a solemn shower.
The winter"'s cold that lately froze our blood. ”

“ In desarts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.⁠10
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired
And not blush so to be admired. ”

“ The songs of Death, forget my sweetest child ?
Which like a flower crusht, with a blast is dead,
And ere full time hangs down his smiling head.
Expecting with clear hope to live anew
Among the angels fed with heavenly dew. ”

“ A sweet but absolute Retreat,
'Mongst paths so lost and trees so high,
That the world may ne'er invade,
Through such windings and such shade.
⁠My unshaken liberty.
No intruders thither come!
Who visit but to be from home. ”

“ Something too high for syllables to speak;
'Till the free soul to a compos'edness charm'd.
Finding the elements of rage disarmed, ⁠40
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,
Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own:—
In such a night let me abroad remain. ”

“ These nicer touches would demand
A Cowley's or a Waller's hand,
To explain, with undisputed art,
What 'tis affects the enlighten'd heart, ⁠20
When every darker thought gives way,
Whilst blooming beauty we survey ”

“ Sonnet
When I have seen by times fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watry main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store ”

“ Thus safely low, my Friend, thou canst not fall;
Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all;
No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife;
Men woods and fields all breathe untroubled life:
Then keep each passion down however dear ”

“ Happy the man, whose wish and care,
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
⁠In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire ”

“ The world,—the clus'tring spheres,—he made,
The glorious light, the soothing shade,
⁠Dale, champaign, grove and hill
The multitudinous abyss⁠10
Where secrecy remains in bliss!
⁠And wisdom hides her skill. ”

“ The boundless wastes and wields of man survey.—
⁠And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil?⁠10
Where all the storms of passion mainly beat,
On flesh and blood: where honor, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth ”

“ Our sighs are then but vernal air;
⁠But April drops our tears,
Which swiftly passing, all grows fair,
Whilst beauty compensates our care,
⁠And youth each vapour clears.
But O! too soon alas, we climb ”

“ Of genuine crystals, pure as those that pave
The azure brooks where Dian joys to lave
Her spotless limbs; and ventured to explore
Dim shades—for reliques, upon Lethe's shore,
Cast up at random by the sullen wave. ”

“ John the Baptist,
(Painted by herself) in the Wilderness with Angels appearing to him with a Lamb by him.
The sun's my fire, when it doth shine.
The hollow spring's my cave of wine,
The rocks and woods afford me meat ”

“ Last comes Christopher Smart, the prosaic person who for one moment touched 'the superhuman poet pair,' Milton and Keats. Browning cannot understand the madness of Smart; at least he would know 'Why only once the fireflame was.' Wordsworth is not so inquisitive into souls, and accepts the legendary tale that Smart's lines were 'written whilst confined in a madhouse, with a key on a wainscot. ”

“ To future ages may'st thou stand
Untouched by the rash workman's hand;⁠20
'Till that large stock of sap be spent,
Which gives thy summer's ornament;
Till the fierce winds, that vainly strive
To shock thy greatness whilst alive,
Shall on thy lifeless hour attend,
Prevent the axe, and grace thy end ”

“ When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope. ”

“ Though cruel human-kind relentless prove,
And least resemble thee in acts of love;
Though friends who should administer relief,
Add pain to woe and misery to grief;
And oft, too oft! with hypocritic air.
Condemn those faults in which they deeply share:
Yet Thou, who dost our various frailties know. ”

“ And while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;⁠10
But chief when evening scenes decay
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine. ”

“ And that unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a Thing is man! ”

“ Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Are these the confines of some faery world?⁠20
A land of genii? Say beyond these wilds
What unknown nations? If indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies. And whither leads,
To vrhat strange regions, or of bliss or pain. ”

“ He looks thereon not strange, but as foredone.
⁠And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives,⁠50
And is deceived: Whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress ”

“ False Theseus, since thy vows are broke,
⁠May following nymphs beware;
(Methinks I hear how thus she spoke,
⁠Who will not trust too far)
In love, in play, in trade, in war
⁠They best themselves acquit,
Who though their interests shipwreck'd are,
⁠Keep unreprov'd their wit.
"Anne Countess of Winchelsea, Authoress of the foregoing Poems, was the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton, in the County of Southampton. She married Heneage, second son of Heneage Earl of Winchelsea, who on the death of his Nephew, Charles, succeeded him in the title of Earl. ”

“ It has been conjectured that Coleridge had come across Captain James's 'Strange and Dangerous Voyage' (1633) in the Bristol Library, and here at least we have proof that in 1819 one of the authors of Lyrical Ballads had in his possession a correct transcript of a poem from James's book, and that he valued the poem so highly as to include it in his Parnassian collection.
The extract from Samuel—not William—Daniel is the longest in the volume, and in some respects the most Wordsworthian. Of the interest Wordsworth felt in Daniel's poems there are many traces. ”

“ More than all their greatest wits.⁠70
And though some too, seeming holy,
Do accout thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contenm
What makes knaves and fools of them.
Oh high Power! that oft doth carry
Men above . . . . . ”

“ If W.'s alteration be intentional, it must be pronounced a remarkable attempt at a conceit in the style of the metaphysical school: the tree of knowledge proved to be the tree of life, by 'one greater man' restoring us. ”

“ I slumber: here my clus'tring fruits I tend:⁠10
Or from the humid flowers, at break of day,
Fresh garlands weave, and chase from all my bounds
Each thing impure and noxious. Enter in,
O Stranger undismayed. ”

“ Gosse tells of the good luck by which he became possessor of a manuscript volume of the poems of Lady Winchelsea of about the year 1696. With what light-hearted pride he writes: 'If there is any person in the two hemispheres who has so fair a claim upon the ghost of Ardelia, let that man stand forth. ”

“ Shews her own ugly heart and hurts not your's.
⁠And whereas none rejoice more in revenge,⁠81
Than women use to do; yet you well know,
That wrong is better checked by being contemned,
Than being pursued ”

“ Shield with your wings, and sing around his tomb.
But if advanced to Heaven's empyreal height.
⁠Above with glorious martyrVl saints to live⁠20
Midst heavenly hymns, and harps and visions bright
⁠And all the joys a smiling God can give ”

“ BROWNING. Men and Women, 1855. The two volumes in one.
BURNS. The Kilmarnock Edition, 1786. Reprinted in type-facsimile.
COLERIDGE & WORDSWORTH. Lyrical Ballads, 1798. Edited by H. Littledale.
COLLINS. Poems. With facsimile title-pages, three illustrations, and a Memoir by Christopher Stone.
GRAY. Poems, 1768. Reprinted in type-facsimile, with four illustrations.
KEATS. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems, 1820. A page-for-page and line-for-line reprint, with a facsimile title-page. ”

“ Thomas James, pp. 81–83. Samuel Daniel, pp. 84–91. Christopher Smart, p. 92. Of Lady Winchelsea it may be said that Wordsworth rediscovered her. Even at the present day her writings have not all found their way into print. ”

“ Lamb does not indicate this excision, and W. follows him in ignoring it.
1. 13 of any eye (Arber and ed. 1633) .
1. 15 mind: This is Lamb's second extract from Wither, and W.'s text only differs in minor punctuation.
41 Both these extracts are from 'Fair Virtue' &c. (Arber's Garner, iv. pp. 415 and 413) .
1. 3 Sometime (1633) , Sometimes (C. Lamb, and Arber) .
1. 4 unheard-of (Arber ; ed. 1633 as W.) . Lamb separates these four lines from preceding by a row of asterisks. Wordsworth's transcriber has evidently had Lamb's essay before her for all the Wither extracts save the first one. ”