| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | The Sonnet, I | | By William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
| | | NUNS fret not at their convent’s narrow room; | |
| And hermits are contented with their cells; | |
| And students with their pensive citadels; | |
| Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, | |
| Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, | 5 |
| High as the highest peak of Furness-fells, | |
| Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: | |
| In truth the prison, unto which we doom | |
| Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me, | |
| In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound | 10 |
| Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground; | |
| Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be) | |
| Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, | |
| Should find brief solace there, as I have found. | | | | |
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