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Alas! What Boots The Long Laborious Quest

By William Wordsworth

Topics: classic

Alas! what boots the long laborious quest Of moral prudence, sought through good and ill; Or pains abstruse, to elevate the will, And lead us on to that transcendent rest Where every passion shall the sway attest Of Reason, seated on her sovereign hill; What is it but a vain and curious skill, If sapient Germany must lie deprest, Beneath the brutal sword? Her haughty Schools Shall blush; and may not we with sorrow say, A few strong instincts and a few plain rules, Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought More for mankind at this unhappy day Then all the pride of intellect and thought?

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Author:William Wordsworth

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"Alas! what boots the long laborious quest..." by William Wordsworth

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William Wordsworth

About William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English Romantic poet who launched the movement with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). His poems—including "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "Tintern Abbey"—championed nature, memory, and the language of common speech.

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