He is in this sense the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them; the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand them; the great despise. The fashionable may ridicule them: but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die.

He lived amidst th'untrodden ways To Rydal Lake that lead:- A bard whom there were none to praise, And very few to read. Behind a cloud his mystic sense, Deep-…

But that which Wordsworth knew, even the old man When poetry had failed like desire, was something I have yet to learn, and you, Duddon, Have learned and re-le…

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

With blackest moss the flower plots Were thickly crusted, one and all; The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the pear to the gable wall. The broken sh…

Next morning, when the golden sunne was risen, And new had bid good morrow to the mountaines; When night her silver light had lockt in prison, Which gave a gli…

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men.