The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Armoury of the invincible Knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.—In everything we are sprung Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold.

‘It is not to be thought of’ (1807)

I travelled among unknown men In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.

‘I travelled among unknown men’ (1807)

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ (1807).

A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth to me the show had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ (1807)

Jones! as from Calais southward you and I Went pacing side by side, this public Way Streamed with the pomp of a too-credulous day.

‘Jones! as from Calais’ (1807) (referring to 14 July 1790)

The gods approve

The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.

‘Laodamia’ (1815) l. 74

Of all that is most beauteous—imaged there In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams.

‘Laodamia’ (1815) l. 103

I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love.

‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798) l. 26

That blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened.

‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798) l. 37

For nature then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint

What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.

‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798) l. 72

I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused,

In working out a pure intent,

Is man,—arrayed for mutual slaughter, Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter.

‘Ode, 1815’ (Imagination—ne’er before content, 1816)

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

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 passed away a glory from the earth.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 1

A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 3

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 3

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 3

The sun shines warm,

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 4

—But there’s a tree of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 4

As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 7

Thou Eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep Haunted for ever by the eternal mind.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 8

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 8

O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 9

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

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 suprised.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 9

Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 9

Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 9

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind...

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye fountains, meadows, hills and groves, Forbode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality’ (1807) st. 10

Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.