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“Another sort of landscape poetry is to be found in Wordsworth, for whom the title of poet of nature might perhaps be claimed. To him the landscape is an influence. What he renders, beyond such pictorial touches as language is capable of, is the moral inspiration which the scene brings to him. This moral inspiration is not drawn at all from the real processes of nature which every landscape manifests in some aspect and for one moment. Such would have been the method of Lucretius; he would have passed imaginatively from the landscape to the sources of the landscape; he would have disclosed the poetry of matter, not of spirit. Wordsworth, on the contrary, dwells on adventitious human matters. He is no poet of genesis, evolution, and natural force in its myriad manifestations. Only a part of the cosmic process engages his interest, or touches his soul—the strengthening or chastening of human purposes by the influences of landscape. These influences are very real; for as food or wine keeps the animal heart beating, or quickens it, so large spaces of calm sky, or mountains, or dells, or solitary stretches of water, expand the breast, disperse the obsessions that cramp a man’s daily existence, and even if he be less contemplative and less virtuous than Wordsworth, make him, for the moment, a friend to all things, and a friend to himself. Yet these influences are vague and for the most part fleeting. Wordsworth would hardly have felt them so distinctly and so constantly had he not found a further link to bind landscape to moral sentiment. Such a link exists. The landscape is the scene of human life. Every spot, every season, is associated with the sort of existence which falls to men in that environment. Landscape for Wordsworth’s age and in his country was seldom without figures. At least, some visible trace of man guided the poet and set the key for his moral meditation. Country life was no less dear to Wordsworth than landscape was; it fitted into every picture; and while the march of things, as Lucretius conceived it, was not present to Wordsworth’s imagination, the revolutions of society—the French Revolution, for instance—were constantly in his thoughts. In so far as he was a poet of human life, Wordsworth was truly a poet of nature. In so far, however, as he was a poet of landscape, he was still fundamentally a poet of human life, or merely of his personal experience. When he talked of nature he was generally moralizing, and altogether subject to the pathetic fallacy; but when he talked of man, or of himself, he was unfolding a part of nature, the upright human heart, and studying it in its truth.”

PoetryHumanityNatureLandscapeWordsworth
Book:Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante And Goethe
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“The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.”

WritingMayPoetryNightFallSpringSeasonsWinterAlcoholCoffeeTeaApplesWritersAutumnPoetsSeptemberPopeInsomniaAprilMiltonSeasonByronAppleNocturnalMorrisShelleyWordsworthAudenTennysonBurnsKeatsSchillerLongfellowHart CraneDe La MareSpender
Book:When Found, Make a Verse of
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“Your words control your life, your progress, your results, even your mental and physical health. You cannot talk like a failure and expect to be successful.”

MotivationalSuccessMotivationMotivational QuotesResultsAttitudeSuccessfulDreamsTalentAcceptanceFailureWords Of WisdomDeterminationMental HealthWordsSuccess QuotesMindsetDedicationMentalitySuccessful PeopleSuccess In LifeComfort ZoneMentalMotivational Quotes For WomenSuccessful LivingMotivational SpeakerMental Health QuotesProgressionBe The ChangeMotivational Quote Of The DayAttitude QuotesPositive MindsetSuccess StrategiesSuccess Self ImprovementWords To Live BySuccess In BusinessAttitude Toward LifeMake A DifferencePhysical HealthSeasonGermany Kent QuotesGermany KentThe Hope GuruHope GuruGermany Kent QuoteLive Your DreamsAttitudesMotivational EnlightenmentSuccessful People QuoteAttitude InspirationYou Are EnoughWordsworthResults QuoteWords Of RevelationWords QuotesSuccessful MindWords Of Wisdom InspirationalBe BetterWordsmithDo MoreMindset For Business SuccessMindset ChangeProgressive EducationComfort ZonesBe Better Than Your PastMindset PositiveMotivational Quotes For WritersRealize Your DreamsMotivational InspirationResults OnlySuccessful Mindset QuoteAccept What You Cannot ChangeAttitudes Towards LifeAccept What Is HappeningWords Of Wisdom For AuthorsYour Talent
Author:Germany Kent
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“When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent - Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore - he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis. Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils.”

CriticismDeepClassicsWordsworthHalf Witted Sheep
Book:Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without
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“In all ages woman has been the source of all that is pure, unselfish, and heroic in the spirit and life of man.....poetry and fiction are based upon woman's love, and the movements of history are mainly due to the sentiments or ambitions she has inspired......there is no aspiration which any man here to-night entertains, no achievement he seeks to accomplish, no great and honorable ambition he desires to gratify, which is not directly related to either or both a mother or a wife. From the hearth-stone around which linger the recollections of our mother, from the fireside where our wife awaits us, come all the purity, all the hope, and all the courage with which we fight the battle of life. The man who is not thus inspired, who labors not so much to secure the applause of the world as the solid and more precious approval of his home, accomplishes little of good for others or of honor for himself. I close with the hope that each of us may always have near us: 'A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command, And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.”

MotherPoetryLiteratureWomenFictionWifeWomanMothersManhoodWivesWordsworthWilliam Wordsworth
Author:Chauncey M. Depew
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“Mr Wisdom,' said the girl who had led him into the presence. 'Ah,' said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. 'Wisdom, did she say?' 'Yes. I wrote "Cocktail Time"' 'You couldn't have done better,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'How's your wife, Mr Wisdom?' Cosmo said he had no wife. 'Surely?' "I'm a bachelor.' Then Wordsworth was wrong. He said you were married to immortal verse. Excuse me a moment,' murmured Mr Saxby, applying himself to the sock again. 'I'm just turning the heel. Do you knit?' 'No.' 'Sleep does. It knits the ravelled sleave of care.' (After a period of engrossed knitting, Cosmo coughs loudly to draw attention to his presence.) 'Goodness, you made me jump!' he (Saxby) said. 'Who are you?' 'My name, as I have already told you, is Wisdom' 'How did you get in?' asked Mr Saxby with a show of interest. 'I was shown in.' 'And stayed in. I see, Tennyson was right. Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers. Take a chair.' 'I have.' 'Take another,' said Mr Saxby hospitably.”

HumourKnittingWordsworthTennysonPublisherCocktail Time
Author:P.G. Wodehouse
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“Offered a job as book critic for Time magazine as a young man, Bellow had been interviewed by Chambers and asked to give his opinion about William Wordsworth. Replying perhaps too quickly that Wordsworth had been a Romantic poet, he had been brusquely informed by Chambers that there was no place for him at the magazine. Bellow had often wondered, he told us, what he ought to have said. I suggested that he might have got the job if he'd replied that Wordsworth was a once-revolutionary poet who later became a conservative and was denounced by Browning and others as a turncoat. This seemed to Bellow to be probably right. More interesting was the related question: What if he'd kept that job?”

Literary CriticismRomantic PoetryTime MagazineWordsworthRobert BrowningSaul BellowWhittaker Chambers
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine.”

TwoThreeVoiceSleepHalfSeaMountainBirdGreenCloudsStormGrassLakesMelodySheepPipeSteepMonotonyDampWordsworthStorm Clouds
Book:The prelude: with a selection from the shorter poems, the sonnets, The recluse, and The excursion, and three essays on the art of poetry
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“Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by "old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago", like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds.”

YearsMindLongHas BeensNationsDutyBattlePrejudiceUnhappyCanadaImmigrantsElsewhereSolitaryLong AgoCompelledIndigenousNot HappyImportsReaperWordsworth
Author:Robertson Davies
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“I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.”

PeopleThinkingWantWritingTryingFirstsMeanIdeasCharacterCareSpeakLanguageCenturySpeechOrdinaryCriticsEveryday20th CenturyDelightedWordsworth
Author:Louis Auchincloss
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“Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun return! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too and mystified for popular demand: perhaps we have experienced feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment "Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure; Sighed to think I read a book Only read perhaps by me!”

ThinkingWorldBookPhilosophyFeelingsPleasurePracticeLonelinessTaughtReturnDemandLonelySimplicityWorthyPoetry IsSentimentsSpunWordsworthShunning
Author:Samuel Laman Blanchard
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“The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.”

MenGivingWholePoetryWaterAnimalSecretObjectsPlantAppealsIntimateFacultyInterpretationWordsworthLinnaeus
Book:Essays in Criticism
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“If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith Pope (if you will though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works are like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice.”

IfsKnowsMenFirstsEvilNamesWishKnow HowRateAdmireGreat MenCampsPassagesPopeFinestMiltonByronWordsworthElls
Author:Charlotte Bronte
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“All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole.... Wordsworth is right: there is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition.”

KnowsWholeBodyGrowsProcessPlansEvolutionWeaponsInstinctSpeciesPossessionImpulseBehaviourAdequateUsageInhibitionsWordsworth
Book:King Solomon's ring: new light on animal ways
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“There are instances: [Henry David] Thoreau read [John] Wordsworth, [John] Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and you got national parks. It took a century for this to happen, for artistic values to percolate down to where honoring the relation of people's imagination to the land, or beauty, or to wild things, was issued in legislation.”

PeopleHappensValuesImaginationLandCenturyRelationInstanceArtisticParksLegislationTeddyNational ParksWild ThingsWordsworthDavid Thoreau
Author:Robert Hass
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“When I was a junior, my school introduced badminton, which was clearly a P.E. department ploy to get me away from the wrestling room, and it worked, since the first time I played badminton was like the first time I tasted sushi or heard the Beatles or read Wordsworth. This was a sport? This counted for gym requirements?”

FirstsSchoolSportsRoomsHeardFirst TimeDepartmentGymWrestlingRequirementsJuniorsSushiWordsworthPloyBadminton
Book:Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut
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“And I love Jane Austen's use of language too--the way she takes her time to develop a phrase and gives it room to grow, so that these clever, complex statements form slowly and then bloom in my mind. Beethoven does the same thing with his cadence and phrasing and structure. It's a fact: Jane Austen is musical. And so's Yeats. And Wordsworth. All the great writers are musical.”

WayGivingMindDoeFactsUseFormLanguageGrowsRoomsStructureComplexesMusicalCleverStatementsPhrasesJaneGreat WritersAustenCadenceWordsworthUse Of LanguageYeats
Book:Things Hoped For
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“A writer works from the material she has, but it comes from the unconscious. Everything is stored up and one never knows what comes up to the surface at a given moment. A period of gestation is certainly needed, what Wordsworth called ‘emotion recollected in tranquility.’ You cannot write about an experience when you are living it, suffering it. You are too busy surviving to look at it objectively. At least I can’t.”

KnowsWritingLooksI CanMomentsSufferingGivenEmotionMaterialsNeededPeriodsBusyCome UpSurfaceUnconsciousTranquilitySurvivingToo BusyWordsworthGestationGestation Period
Author:Rosamond Lehmann
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“All of us , I believe , carry about in our heads places and landscapes we shall never forget because we have experienced such intensity of life there :places where, like the child that 'feels its life in every limb' in Wordsworth's poem'We are seven' ,our eyes have opened wider, and all our senses have somehow heightened.By way of returning the compliment , we accord these places that have given us such joy a special place in our memories and imaginations. They live on in us, wherever we may be, however far from them.”

WayFeelsBelieveMayChildrenEyeJoyGivenI BelieveImaginationMemoriesForgetSpecialSevenSensesLandscapeNever ForgetComplimentIntensityLimbsAccordOur MemoriesSpecial PlacesWordsworth
Book:Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
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“No monster vibration, no snake universe hallucinations. Many tiny jeweled violet flowers along the path of a living brook that looked like Blake's illustration for a canal in grassy Eden: huge Pacific watery shore, Orlovsky dancing naked like Shiva long-haired before giant green waves, titanic cliffs that Wordsworth mentioned in his own Sublime, great yellow sun veiled with mist hanging over the planet's oceanic horizon. No harm.”

LongUniverseSunPathPlanetsFlowerHugeGreenDancingWaveHarmTinyMonstersNakedGiantsHorizonShoreYellowSublimeSnakesVioletCliffsVibrationsMistEdenPacificBrooksIllustrationHallucinationsBlakeCanalsShivaWordsworthYellow Sun
Author:Allen Ginsberg
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