For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude

And now I see with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine. A being breathing thoughtful breaths, A traveler between life and death.

Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains: each a mighty Voice.

For all things are less dreadful than they seem.

My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars.