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Iona

By William Wordsworth

Topics: classic

On to Iona! What can she afford To 'us' save matter for a thoughtful sigh, Heaved over ruin with stability In urgent contrast? To diffuse the WORD (Thy Paramount, mighty Nature! and Time's Lord) Her Temples rose, 'mid pagan gloom; but why, Even for a moment, has our verse deplored Their wrongs, since they fulfilled their destiny? And when, subjected to a common doom Of mutability, those far-famed Piles Shall disappear from both the sister Isles, Iona's Saints, forgetting not past days, Garlands shall wear of amaranthine bloom, While heaven's vast sea of voices chants their praise.

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"On to Iona! What can she afford..."

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Author:William Wordsworth

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"On to Iona! What can she afford..." 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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