The Excursion

The Excursion: Being a portion of The Recluse, a poem is a long poem by Romantic poet William Wordsworth and was first published in 1814. It was intended to be the second part of The Recluse, an unfinished larger work that was also meant to include The Prelude, Wordsworth's other long poem, which was eventually published posthumously. The exact dates of its composition are unknown, but the first manuscript is generally dated as either September 1806 or December 1809.

Quotes

• Of blessed consolations in distress.
  • Preface to the Excursion (Edition, 1814)

• The vision and the faculty divine;
  Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.
  • Book I - The Wanderer, l. 79

• Strongest minds
  Are often those of whom the noisy world
  Hears least.
  • Book I - The Wanderer, l. 91

• The imperfect offices of prayer and praise.
  • Book I - The Wanderer, l. 216

• He gazed upon that mighty orb of song,
  The divine Milton.
  • Book I - The Wanderer, l. 249

• The good die first,
  And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
  Burn to the socket.
  • Book I - The Wanderer, l. 500

• This dull product of a scoffer's pen.
  • Book II - The Solitary, l. 484

• With battlements that on their restless fronts
  Bore stars.
  • Book II - The Solitary, l. 844

• Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop
  Than when we soar.
  • Book III - Despondency, l. 231

• Wrongs unredressed, or insults unavenged.
  • Book III - Despondency, l. 374

• Monastic brotherhood, upon rock
  Aerial.
  • Book III - Despondency, l. 393

• The intellectual power, through words and things,
  Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way!
  • Book III - Despondency, l. 700
  • Compare: Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
    Through words and things, a dim and perilous way. - Borderers, written 18 years before Excursion.

• Society became my glittering bride,
  And airy hopes my children.
  • Book III - Despondency, l. 735

• And the most difficult of tasks to keep
  Heights which the soul is competent to gain.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 139

• For by superior energies; more strict
  Affiance in each other; faith more firm
  In their unhallowed principles; the bad
  Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak,
  The vacillating, inconsistent good.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 305

• There is a luxury in self-dispraise;
  And inward self-disparagement affords
  To meditative spleen a grateful feast.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 475

• Recognizes ever and anon
  The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 600

• Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 626

• We live by Admiration, Hope and Love.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 763

• Pan himself,
  The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god!
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 886

• I have seen
  A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
  Of inland ground, applying to his ear
  The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
  To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
  Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
  Brightened with joy; for from within were heard
  Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
  Mysterious union with its native sea.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 1132

• So build we up the being that we are.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 1264

• One in whom persuasion and belief
  Had ripened into faith, and faith become
  A passionate intuition.
  • Book IV - Despondency Corrected, l. 1293

• Spires whose "silent finger points to heaven."
  • Book VI - The Churchyard among the Mountains, l. 19

• Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man,
  Could field or grove, could any spot of earth,
  Show to his eye an image of the pangs
  Which it hath witnessed,—render back an echo
  Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod!
  • Book VI - The Churchyard among the Mountains, l. 806

• Wild is the music of the autumnal wind
  Among the faded woods.
  • Book VI - The Churchyard among the Mountains, l. 858; these lines appear only in the earliest editions of The Excursion; they were re-written for the 1837 edition

• And when the stream
  Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
  A consciousness remained that it had left
  Deposited upon the silent shore
  Of memory images and precious thoughts
  That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.
  • Book VII - The Churchyard among the Mountains, cont., l. 25

• Wisdom married to immortal verse.
  • Book VII - The Churchyard among the Mountains, cont., l. 536

• A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
  And confident tomorrows.
  • Book VII - The Churchyard among the Mountains, cont., l. 557

• The primal duties shine aloft, like stars;
  The charities that soothe and heal and bless
  Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.
  • Book IX - Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake, l. 238

• In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
  A twofold image: on a grassy bank
  A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood
  Another and the same!
  • Book IX - Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake, l. 439

External links

• The Excursion at Bartleby.com.