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Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - I - How Soon, Alas!

By William Wordsworth

Topics: classic

Part II. To the close of the Troubles in the Reign of Charles I How soon, alas! did Man, created pure By Angels guarded, deviate from the line Prescribed to duty: woeful forfeiture He made by willful breach of law divine. With like perverseness did the Church abjure Obedience to her Lord, and haste to twine, 'Mid Heaven-born flowers that shall for aye endure, Weeds on whose front the world had fixed her sign. O Man, if with thy trials thus it fares, If good can smooth the way to evil choice, From all rash censure be the mind kept free; He only judges right who weighs, compares, And in the sternest sentence which his voice Pronounces, ne'er abandons Charity.

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"Part II. To the close of the Troubles in the Reign of Charles I..."

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Author:William Wordsworth

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"Part II. To the close of the Troubles in the Reign..." 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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