Tag Archives: wordsworth

My Tyneside rock

Well, I probably ended up painting more than the kids!


It says ‘rolled round in Earth’s diurnal course, with rocks and stones and trees’, which is a quote from one of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems (‘ A slumber did my spirit seal’, if I’m remembering correctly) – so I think it’s fitting it got left in a pub in the Lake District. 

Things I find in old notebooks

Excerpt from ‘Ode to Duty’ Wordsworth (1805)

Serene will be our days and bright
And happy will our nature be
When love is an unerring light
And joy its own security
And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold
Live in the spirit of this creed
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need

I, loving freedom, and untried
No sport of every random gust
Yet being to myself a guide
Too blindly have reposed my trust
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray
But thee I would serve more strictly, if I may

Through no disturbance of my soul
or strong compunction in me wrought
I supplicate for thy control
But in the quietness of thought;
Me this unchartered freedom tires
I feel the weight of chance desires
My hopes no more must change their name
I long for a repose that is ever the same