Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity:
The sentence comes in Wordsworth’s Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, which he expanded in 1802. It is often taken as a manifesto of English Romantic poetry.
I wandered lonely as a Cloud / That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd / A host of dancing Daffodills;
My heart leaps up when I behold / A Rainbow in the sky:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.