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This Lawn, A Carpet All Alive

By William Wordsworth

Topics: classic

This Lawn, a carpet all alive With shadows flung from leaves, to strive In dance, amid a press Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields Of Worldlings reveling in the fields Of strenuous idleness; Less quick the stir when tide and breeze Encounter, and to narrow seas Forbid a moment's rest; The medley less when boreal Lights Glance to and fro, like aery Sprites To feats of arms addrest! Yet, spite of all this eager strife, This ceaseless play, the genuine life That serves the stedfast hours, Is in the grass beneath, that grows Unheeded, and the mute repose Of sweetly-breathing flowers.

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"This Lawn, a carpet all alive..."

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Author:William Wordsworth

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"This Lawn, a carpet all alive..." 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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