William Wordsworth

Wordsworth, born in his beloved Lake District, was the son of an attorney. He went to school first at Penrith and then at Hawkshead Grammar school before studying, from , at St John's College, Cambridge - all of which periods were later to be described vividly in The Prelude. In he went with friends on a walking tour to France, the Alps and Italy, before arriving in France where Wordsworth was to spend the next year. Whilst in France he fell in love twice over: once with a young French woman, Annette Vallon, who subsequently bore him a daughter, and then, once more, with the French Revolution. Returning to England he wrote, and left unpublished, his Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff - a tract in support of the French Revolutionary cause. In , after receiving a legacy, Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy first in Dorset and then at Alfoxden, Dorset, close to Coleridge. In these years he wrote many of his greatest poems and also travelled with Coleridge and Dorothy, in the winter of -, to Germany. Two years later the second and enlarged edition of the Lyrical Ballads appeared in , just one year before Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson. This was followed, in , by the publication of Poems in Two Volumes, which included the poems 'Resolution and Independence' and 'Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'. During this period he also made new friendships with Walter Scott, Sir G. Beaumont and De Quincy, wrote such poems as 'Elegaic Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle' (), and fathered five children. He received a civil list pension in and was made poet-laureate just one year later. Today Wordsworth's poetry remains widely read. Its almost universal appeal is perhaps best explained by Wordsworth's own words on the role, for him, of poetry; what he called "the most philosophical of all writing" whose object is "truth...carried alive into the heart by passion".  www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive "A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stones and Crags," A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags, A rude and natural causeway, interposed Between the water and a winding slope Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy: And there myself and two beloved Friends, One calm September morning, ere the mist Had altogether yielded to the sun, Sauntered on this retired and difficult way. ----Ill suits the road with one in haste; but we Played with our time; and, as we strolled along, It was our occupation to observe Such objects as the waves had tossed ashore-- Feather, or leaf, or weed, or withered bough, Each on the other heaped, along the line Of the dry wreck. And, in our vacant mood, Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake, Suddenly halting now--a lifeless stand! And starting off again with freak as sudden; In all its sportive wanderings, all the while, Making report of an invisible breeze That was its wings, its chariot, and its horse, Its playmate, rather say, its moving soul. --And often, trifling with a privilege Alike indulged to all, we paused, one now, And now the other, to point out, perchance To pluck, some flower or water-weed, too fair Either to be divided from the place On which it grew, or to be left alone To its own beauty. Many such there are, Fair ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall fern, So stately, of the queen Osmunda named; Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode On Grasmere's beach, than Naiad by the side Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance. --So fared we that bright morning: from the fields Meanwhile, a noise was heard, the busy mirth Of reapers, men and women, boys and girls. Delighted much to listen to those sounds, And feeding thus our fancies, we advanced Along the indented shore; when suddenly, Through a thin veil of glittering haze was seen Before us, on a point of jutting land, The tall and upright figure of a Man Attired in peasant's garb, who stood alone, Angling beside the margin of the lake. "Improvident and reckless," we exclaimed, "The Man must be, who thus can lose a day Of the mid harvest, when the labourer's hire