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.
One of those heavenly days that cannot die.
That to this mountain-daisy’s self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone!
The mightiest lever known to the world: imagination.
Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And ’tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.
The softest breeze to fairest flowers gives birth: Think not that Prudence dwells in dark abodes, She scans the future with the eye of gods.
A youth to whom was given So much of earth, so much of heaven.
Shalt show us how divine a thing A woman may be made.
That mighty orb of song, The divine Milton.
I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections.