Literary Birthday – 7 April – William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 and died on 23 April 1850.

William Wordsworth Quotes

1. Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
2. The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.
3. The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.
4. Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
5. The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.
6. Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
7. The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.
8. Though nothing will bring back the hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
9. To begin, begin.

William Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850. He was a major English Romantic poet who helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by releasing their joint publication Lyrical Ballads. According to Britannica: ‘The principles he outlines in the preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) were revolutionary. By seeking to compose poetry that reflects “incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men,” Wordsworth (with Coleridge) essentially changed English-language literature.’ Wordsworth’s magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as ‘The Poem to Coleridge’. In April 2020, the Royal Mail issued a series of postage stamps to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wordsworth.

Source for Image: Benjamin Haydon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wordsworth_on_Helvellyn_by_Benjamin_Robert_Haydon.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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