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| | [[Image:William Wordsworth.jpg|thumb|William Wordsworth]] | | [[Image:William Wordsworth.jpg|thumb|William Wordsworth]] |
| − | '''William Wordsworth''' (Cockermouth April 7, 1770 – Rydal Mount April 23, 1850) was a poet who founded English Romanticism. He was born in 1770 -- the same year of birth as [[Beethoven]], [[Hegel]], and Hölderlin -- in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the English Lake District. William's mother died when he was eight, and his father died when he was fourteen. Wordsworth first attended Hawkshead Grammar School in Westmorland, a boarding school that emphasized the teaching of mathematics and classics. He later attended [[Cambridge University]], spending four months in 1790 on a walking tour across [[Europe]]. While in France, he became a fervent republican sympathizer, famously exclaiming of the early days of the [[French Revolution|Revolution]]: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven!" (''[[The Prelude]]'' [1805] XII.108-09). | + | '''William Wordsworth''' (Cockermouth April 7, 1770 – Rydal Mount April 23, 1850) was a poet who founded English [[Romanticism]]. He was born in 1770 -- the same year of birth as [[Beethoven]], [[Hegel]], and Hölderlin -- in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the English Lake District. William's mother died when he was eight, and his father died when he was fourteen. Wordsworth first attended Hawkshead Grammar School in Westmorland, a boarding school that emphasized the teaching of mathematics and classics. He later attended [[Cambridge University]], spending four months in 1790 on a walking tour across [[Europe]]. While in France, he became a fervent republican sympathizer, famously exclaiming of the early days of the [[French Revolution|Revolution]]: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven!" (''[[The Prelude]]'' [1805] XII.108-09). |
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| | + | His poems are all in the [[public domain]] and are accessible on the internet, such as "I wandered lonely as a cloud":<ref>https://www.poetry.com/poem/42226/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud</ref> |
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| | + | I wandered lonely as a cloud |
| | + | <br>That floats on high o'er vales and hills, |
| | + | <br>When all at once I saw a crowd, |
| | + | <br>A host, of golden daffodils; |
| | + | <br>Beside the lake, beneath the trees, |
| | + | <br>Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. |
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| | + | Continuous as the stars that shine |
| | + | <br>And twinkle on the milky way, |
| | + | <br>They stretched in never-ending line |
| | + | <br>Along the margin of a bay: |
| | + | <br>Ten thousand saw I at a glance, |
| | + | <br>Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. |
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| | + | The waves beside them danced; but they |
| | + | <br>Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: |
| | + | <br>A poet could not but be gay, |
| | + | <br>In such a jocund company: |
| | + | <br>I gazed---and gazed---but little thought |
| | + | <br>What wealth the show to me had brought: |
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| | + | For oft, when on my couch I lie |
| | + | <br>In vacant or in pensive mood, |
| | + | <br>They flash upon that inward eye |
| | + | <br>Which is the bliss of solitude; |
| | + | <br>And then my heart with pleasure fills, |
| | + | <br>And dances with the daffodils. |
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| | Wordsworth published his first works of poetry in 1793, including "Descriptive Sketches" and "An Evening Walk". He would later publish, with the help of his friend [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], the ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]''. In the preface to the ''Lyrical Ballads'', Wordsworth declared that the book's object was "to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them... in a selection of language really used by men, tracing in them the primary laws of our nature." | | Wordsworth published his first works of poetry in 1793, including "Descriptive Sketches" and "An Evening Walk". He would later publish, with the help of his friend [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], the ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]''. In the preface to the ''Lyrical Ballads'', Wordsworth declared that the book's object was "to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them... in a selection of language really used by men, tracing in them the primary laws of our nature." |