The earth was all before me. With a heart Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, I look about; and should the chosen guide Be nothing better than a wandering cloud, I cannot miss my way.
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity.
...one interior life in which all beings live with God, themselves are God, existing in the mighty whole, indistinguishable as the cloudless east is from the cloudless west, when all the hemisphere is one cerulean blue.
The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, An appetite; a feeling and a love that had no need of a remoter charm by thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.