"All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops"
- Resolution and Independence
I moved outside into the morning sunshine, opened my book and read these lines - I feel like Willie Wordsworth has his eye on me ???
“There are in our existence spots of time
Which with distinct preeminence retain
A fructifying virtue, whence, depressed
By trivial occupations and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds -
Especially the imaginative power -
Are nourished and invisibly repaired."
- The Two-Part Prelude: First Part
"There is a comfort in the strength of love;
'Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain, or break the heart."
- Michael: A Pastoral Poem
"Up! up! my Friend and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
- The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the Same Subject
"Where are your books? - that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind."
- Expostulation and Reply
"He found the little he had stored to meet
The hour of accident, or crippling age,
Was all consumed... 'twas now
A time of trouble: shoals of artisans
Were from their daily labour turned away
To hang for bread on parish charity."
- The Ruined Cottage, 1797
Picture: Tory Mayor and Council Leader of Dartford having jolly larks opening a food bank, May 2022.
There's no shame in needing to use a food bank, it's shameful that people still need to.
Rounding off my day visiting Wordsworth's home town with a cup of tea and a piece of Sarah Nelson's Grasmere Gingerbread, still baked to her secret Victorian recipe! 😋🍪🍵
#BooksandFood #BooksandTea
A little difficult to make out the inscription on the left-hand stone, which marks the graves of William and Mary Wordsworth in the churchyard of St. Oswald's in Grasmere, a lovely Lakeland village in which it was harder to get a cheese and pickle sandwich for lunch than it was to get artisan Swedish meatballs 🤷🏻♂️ (Joking aside, it really is a lovely village and well worth a visit.)
The perfect morning, silence, coffee and Wordsworth.
William Wordsworth | 
