Ode to Duty
by William Wordsworth
English Romantic poet and poet-laureate, whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), first published anonymously with contributions by his friend Coleridge, marked an important turning point in the history of English literature. Some of his many well-known poems include 'The Brothers', 'Michael' and the "Lucy" poems: 'She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways', 'Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known', 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal' and 'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower'. His other great work, the philosophical-autobiographical poem The Prelude was published posthumously in 1850. He also published two poems dealing with the sublime and the picturesque; An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches (both in 1793), and his one and only play The Borders (1842). Wordsworth's name, perhaps even more so than that of his friend Coleridge, remains to this day almost synonymous, in England, with Romanticism itself.
Ode to Duty
|
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! There are who ask not if thine eye Serene will be our days and bright, I, loving freedom, and untried, Through no disturbance of my soul, My hopes no more must change their name; Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear To humbler functions, awful Power! |