She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.
Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.
Brothers all In honour, as in one community, Scholars and gentlemen.
The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o’er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height.
Primroses, the Spring may love them; Summer knows but little of them.
With little here to do or see Of things that in the great world be, Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee For thou art worthy, Thou unassuming commonplace Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace Which love makes for thee!
Burn all the statutes and their shelves: They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves.
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.
O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!
I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A correspondent breeze, that gently moved With quickening virtue, but is now become A tempest, a redundant energy, Vexing its own creation.
Bright flower! whose home is everywhere Bold in maternal nature’s care And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee Some concord with humanity, Given to no other flower I see The forest through.
A babe, by intercourse of touch I held mute dialogues with my Mother’s heart.
In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is.
Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
The streams with softest sound are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now, if e’er you can.
Oft on the dappled turf at ease I sit, and play with similes, Loose type of things through all degrees.
On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of images before me rise, Accompanied by feelings of delight Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed.
Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains: each a mighty Voice.
For all things are less dreadful than they seem.
Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises.