The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth ...

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E. Moxon & Company, 1870 - Superexlibris - 568 pages

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Page 128 - 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 life and nature — purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying, by such discipline, Both...
Page 103 - A SIMPLE child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death ? I met a little cottage girl : She was eight years old she said ; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad ; Her eyes were fair, and very fair ; Her beauty made me glad. " Sisters and brothers, little maid ! How many...
Page 105 - The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose ; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare ; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair ; The sunshine is a glorious birth ; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Page 109 - But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised...
Page 107 - See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral...
Page 123 - Was it for this That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, And from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice 'That flowed along my dreams...
Page 225 - Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream...
Page 318 - 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!
Page 129 - When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me— even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round...
Page 125 - 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.

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