Wordsworth's Literary CriticismH. Milford, 1905 - 260 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
admiration affections appear beauty Catullus character Coleorton Coleridge composition contemplation Convention of Cintra critical degree delight diction Dryden edition epitaph especially excited exist expression eyes faculty fancy feelings genius give habits heart honour human nature imagination importance individual instance intellectual interest judgement kind knowledge labour language less letter living Lucretius Lyrical Ballads Madame de Staël manner memory ment metre metrical Milton mind monument moral nations never objects observed opinion Ossian Paradise Lost passages passions perhaps persons philosophical pleasure poems Poet Poet's poetic poetic diction poetry Pope preface present principles produced prose qualities Reader reason respect Robert Burns Rydal Mount sensations sense sensibility sentiment Shakespeare sincerity sonnet sorrow soul speak spirit stanza style supposed sympathy taste things thought tion truth verse Virgil virtue Weever Winchelsea wish words Wordsworth writing youth
Popular passages
Page 164 - She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners...
Page 27 - ... the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.
Page xviii - Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope, And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith; Of blessed consolations in distress; Of moral strength, and intellectual Power; Of joy in widest commonalty spread...
Page 98 - Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day.
Page 25 - The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, that of the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man.
Page 97 - What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labour of an age in piled stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
Page 37 - These pretty babes, with hand in hand, Went wandering up and down, But never more could see the man Approaching from the town...
Page 20 - It will easily be perceived, that the only part of this Sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed in Italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word 'fruitless...
Page 161 - Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire. Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, He onward came ; far off his coming shone : And twenty thousand (I their number heard) Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen.
Page 28 - ... by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.