William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English Romantic poet whose work transformed the language and subjects of poetry. His major works include Lyrical Ballads, written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Prelude, Tintern Abbey, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, and The World Is Too Much with Us. Wordsworth matters because he argued that ordinary life, memory, childhood, rural people, and nature could carry profound imaginative and moral power. His poetry treats the mind as formed by landscape, feeling, recollection, and spiritual intuition. As Poet Laureate, he became a national figure, though his early radicalism softened over time. His quotes endure because they invite readers to learn from nature, honor childhood perception, and recover inward depth from a world of getting and spending. His poems still invite readers to recover attention from haste and possession.

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