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Iona - Upon Landing

By William Wordsworth

Topics: classic

How sad a welcome! To each voyager Some ragged child holds up for sale a store Of wave-worn pebbles, pleading on the shore Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir, Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer. Yet is yon neat trim church a grateful speck Of novelty amid the sacred wreck Strewn far and wide. Think, proud Philosopher! Fallen though she be, this Glory of the west, Still on her sons, the beams of mercy shine; And "hopes, perhaps more heavenly bright than thine, A grace by thee unsought and unpossest, A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine, Shall gild their passage to eternal rest."

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"How sad a welcome! To each voyager..."

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Author:William Wordsworth

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"How sad a welcome! To each voyager..." 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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