Selected Poems

It is hard to imagine how radically the tender songs and simple stories in this collection changed the history of English poetry, but Wordsworth exerted a profound influence on the whole of nineteenth-century culture in Britain and America. His literary revolution was founded on three principles - introspection, nature worship, and the cult of ordinary experience. These three he blended together in a verse which is simple in manner but profound and deeply moving in content. In an age of revol…