| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | A Poet!—He Hath Put His Heart to School | | By William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
| | | A POET!—He hath put his heart to school, | |
| Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff | |
| Which Art hath lodged within his hand—must laugh | |
| By precept only, and shed tears by rule. | |
| Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff, | 5 |
| And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool, | |
| In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool | |
| Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph. | |
| How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? | |
| Because the lovely little flower is free | 10 |
| Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold; | |
| And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree | |
| Comes not by casting in a formal mould, | |
| But from its own divine vitality. | | | | |
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