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| A cheerful life is what the Muses love; / A soaring spirit is their prime delight. | 1 |
| A perfect woman, nobly planned, / To warn, to comfort, and command. | 2 |
| A primrose by a river’s brim / A yellow primrose was to him, / And it was nothing more. | 3 |
| A simple child, / That lightly draws its breath, / And feels its life in every limb, / What should it know of death? | 4 |
| All things that love the sun are out of doors. | 5 |
| And he is oft the wisest man / Who is not wise at all. | 6 |
| And much it grieved my heart to think / What man has made of man. | 7 |
| Books, we know, / Are a substantial world, pure and good. | 8 |
| But hushed be every thought that springs / From out the bitterness of things. | 9 |
| But shapes that come not at an earthly call, / Will not depart when mortal voices bid. | 10 |
| But who would force the soul, tilts with a straw / Against a champion cased in adamant. | 11 |
| By strength of heart the sailor fights with roaring seas. | 12 |
| Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher. | 13 |
| Death is the quiet haven of us all. | 14 |
| Disasters, do the best we can, / Will reach both great and small; / And he is oft the wisest man / Who is not wise at all. | 15 |
| Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, / Are a substantial world, both pure and good; / Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, / Our pastime and our happiness will grow. | 16 |
| Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, / Brought from a pensive through a happy place. | 17 |
| Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished. | 18 |
| Full twenty times was Peter fear’d / For once that Peter was respected. | 19 |
| Give unto me, made lowly wise, / The spirit of self-sacrifice; / The confidence of reason give; / And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live. | 20 |
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| God made the flowers to beautify / The earth and cheer man’s careful mood; / And he is happiest who hath power / To gather wisdom from a flower, / And wake his heart in every hour / To pleasant gratitude. | 21 |
| Great God, I had rather be / A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn; / So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. | 22 |
| He is oft the wisest man / Who is not wise at all. | 23 |
| Heaven lies about us in our infancy. | 24 |
| Him only pleasure leads and peace attends, / Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends, / Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends. | 25 |
| How fast has brother followed / From sunshine to the sunless land. | 26 |
| Human nature … / Is not a punctual presence, but a spirit / Diffused through time and space. | 27 |
| Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. | 28 |
| It is joy to think the best we can of human kind. | 29 |
| Joy? a moon by fits reflected in a swamp or watery bog. | 30 |
| Love betters what is best, / Even here below, but more in heaven above. | 31 |
| Meekness is the cherish’d bent / Of all the truly great and all the innocent. | 32 |
| Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade / Of that which once was great is passed away. | 33 |
| Men do not make their homes unhappy because they have genius, but because they have not enough genius. | 34 |
| Mightier far / Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway / Of magic, potent over sun and star, / Is Love, though oft to agony distrest, / And though his favourite seat be feeble woman’s breast. | 35 |
| Minds that have nothing to confer / Find little to perceive. | 36 |
| My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky: / So was it when my life began, / So is it now I am a man; / So be it when I shall grow old, / Or let me die. | 37 |
| Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her. | 38 |
| Nor less I deem that there are powers / Which of themselves our minds impress; / That we can feel this mind of ours / In a wide passiveness. | 39 |
| O dearest, dearest boy, my heart / For better love would seldom yearn, / Could I but teach the hundredth part / Of what from thee I learn. | 40 |
| Ocean is a mighty harmonist. | 41 |
| One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can. | 42 |
| Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. | 43 |
| Perfect woman, nobly planned, / To warn, to comfort, and command; / And yet a spirit still, and bright / With something of an angel light. | 44 |
| Plain living and high thinking. | 45 |
| Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science. | 46 |
| Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man. | 47 |
| Shapes that come not at an earthly call / Will not depart when mortal voices bid. | 48 |
| She lived unknown, and few could know / When Lucy ceased to be; / But she is in her grave, and oh / The difference to me! | 49 |
| Small service is true service while it lasts. / Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: / The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, / Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun. To a child. | 50 |
| Soft is the music that would charm for ever; / The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly. | 51 |
| Something between a hindrance and a help. | 52 |
| Stern daughter of the voice of God. Of Duty. | 53 |
| Strongest minds / Are often those of whom the noisy world / Hears least. | 54 |
| Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous form of things: / We murder to dissect. | 55 |
| Sweetest melodies are those that are by distance made more sweet. | 56 |
| The child is father of the man. | 57 |
| The clouds that gather round the setting sun / Do take a sober colouring from an eye / That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality. | 58 |
| The eye—it cannot choose but see; / We cannot bid the ear be still; / Our bodies feel, where’er they be, / Against or with our will. | 59 |
| The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly. | 60 |
| The gods approve the depth, and not the tumult, of the soul. | 61 |
| The good die first, / And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust / Burn to the socket. | 62 |
| The good old rule / Sufficeth them, the simple plan, / That they should take who have the power, / And they should keep who can. | 63 |
| The heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world. | 64 |
| The intellectual power, through words and things / Went sounding on a dim and perilous way. | 65 |
| The music in my heart I bore / Long after it was heard no more. | 66 |
| The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; / The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, / Are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers. | 67 |
| The sea that bares her bosom to the moon. | 68 |
| The silence that is in the starry sky. | 69 |
| The silent heavens have goings-on; / The stars have tasks. | 70 |
| The still, sad music of humanity. | 71 |
| The wiser mind / Mourns less for what age takes away / Than what it leaves behind. | 72 |
| The wisest, happiest of our kind are they / That ever walk content with Nature’s way. | 73 |
| The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; / Little we see in Nature that is ours. | 74 |
| There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream. / It is not now as it has been of yore; / Turn wheresoe’er I may, / By night or day, / The things which I have seen, I now can see no more. | 75 |
| Think you, ’mid all this mighty sum / Of things for ever speaking, / That nothing of itself will come, / But we must still be seeking. | 76 |
| Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. | 77 |
| Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart. | 78 |
| ’Tis said fantastic ocean doth unfold the likeness of whate’er on land is seen. | 79 |
| ’Tis, by comparison, an easy task / Earth to despise; but to converse with heaven— / This is not easy. | 80 |
| To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. | 81 |
| Trust me, that for the instructed, time will come / When they shall meet no object but may teach / Some acceptable lesson to their minds / Of human suffering or human joy. / For them shall all things speak of man. | 82 |
| Truths that wake, / To perish never. | 83 |
| Type of the wise who soar, but never roam, / True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. | 84 |
| Up! up! my friend, and quit your books, / Or surely you’ll grow double. / Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks, / Why all this toil and trouble? | 85 |
| We have all of us one human heart. | 86 |
| We live by admiration, hope, and love; / And even as these are well and wisely fix’d, / In dignity of being we ascend. | 87 |
| We must be free or die who speak the tongue / That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold / Which Milton held. | 88 |
| We poets in our youth begin in gladness, / But thereof come in the end despondency and madness. | 89 |
| We wear a face of joy because / We have been glad of yore. | 90 |
| What were mighty Nature’s self? / Her features could they win us, / Unhelp’d by the poetic voice / That hourly speaks within us? | 91 |
| Who would check the happy feeling / That inspires the linnet’s song? / Who would stop the swallow wheeling / On her pinions swift and strong? | 92 |
| Why should we crave a hallow’d spot? / An altar is in each man’s cot, / A church in every grove that spreads / Its living roof above our heads. | 93 |
| Wings have we—and as far as we can go, / We may find pleasure: wilderness and wood, / Blank ocean and mere sky, support that mood / Which with the lofty, sanctifies the low. | 94 |
| Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar. | 95 |
| Wisdom sits with children round her knees. | 96 |
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