Read this if you…
- want the next best English poet after shakespeare
- love Nature and Nostalgia
- want the most important Romantic poet
Skip this if you…
- hate nature
- hate nostalgia
The 
Take
Between him and Milton for #2 English poet.His quaint love of nature is infectious, and how he infuses that with everyday humble people, whether innocent or hardened, is just beautiful.Loved the vibe. Maybe a little one note, but it’s a great note
The lineage through William Wordsworth, Selected Poems
- Paradise Lost by John Milton. William Wordsworth, Selected Poems built on it. - Wordsworth's epic ambition is Miltonic to the core — after Coleridge, no poet shaped him more than Milton - *The Prelude* answers *Paradise Lost* in its own blank verse: a paradise lost and recovered, relocated from Eden to the growth of the poet's mind - Wordsworth's allusions actively summon Milton — read *Paradise Lost* first to catch what he's reaching for, and against
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. William Wordsworth, Selected Poems built on it. - Among these poems is Wordsworth's own modern-English rendering of Chaucer's *Prioress' Tale* — a Romantic poet reaching directly back to the medieval source - Read the *Tales* first and the homage lands: Wordsworth translated them, he said, "out of my love and reverence for Chaucer" - The line from medieval English verse to Romantic poetry, drawn by Wordsworth's own hand
Depicted in Art
An elderly Wordsworth stands arms-crossed in meditative pose atop Helvellyn, mountains receding behind him under a brooding sky.
Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1842
The ruined castle stands on a rocky promontory under a black squall, foaming waves breaking below, a small boat tossed in the surf.
Sir George Howland Beaumont, 1806
Young Wordsworth in three-quarter view, plain dark coat and white cravat, intent expression, painted the year of Lyrical Ballads.
William Shuter, 1798
Late portrait of Wordsworth in his seventies, white hair and lined face, dark coat, eyes fixed forward with patriarchal calm.
Samuel Crossthwaite, 1844
Late-Victorian view of the abbey ruins with cattle grazing in the foreground, Wye Valley hills beyond.
Benjamin Williams Leader, 1882
The abbey ruins under a full moon, dark cypresses framing the south transept, a quiet figure with a lantern below.
John Warwick Smith, 1789
The abbey silhouetted against a glowing dusk sky, foreground trees in shadow, light pooling through the empty east window.
Samuel Palmer, 1860
View of Tintern from across the Wye, the ruined abbey rising above wooded riverbanks under broken cloud.
William Havell
Sunlit watercolour of the ruined abbey from the south, weathered tracery and crumbled walls glowing against pastoral hills.
J. M. W. Turner, 1828
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
2004
John Hayden's Penguin Selected is compact and clean, with a useful intro and no excess apparatus. The handy paperback for carrying around, and enough of the major poems to feel like a real Wordsworth shelf in one volume.
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Notable Quotes
I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills.
- Matthew Arnold, Victorian poet and critic, 1822–1888: "The poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton … the most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time."
- John Stuart Mill, English philosopher and political economist, 1806–1873: "They expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty."
- John Keats, English Romantic poet, 1795–1821: "Wordsworth is deeper than Milton … his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages."
- Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, Nobel laureate, 1939–2013: "His achievement is the largest and most securely founded in the canon of native English poetry since Milton."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Romantic poet and critic, 1772–1834: "Friend of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good! / Into my heart have I received that Lay."
- William Hazlitt, English essayist and critic, 1778–1830: "Mr. Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age."