Home at Grasmere Beauty, whose living home is the green earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms The craft of delicate spirits hath composed From earth’s materials, waits upon my steps, Pitches her tents before me where I move, An hourly Neighbour. Paradise and groves Elysian, fortunate islands fields like those of old In the deep ocean, wherefore should they be A History, or but a dream, when minds Once wedded to this outward frame of things In love, find these the growth of common day?
I, long before the blesséd hour arrives, Would sing in solitude the spousal verse Of this great consummation, would proclaim – Speaking of nothing more than what we are – How exquisitely the individual Mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external world is fitted; and how exquisitely too – Theme this but little heard of among men – The external world is fitted to the mind; And the creation (by no lower name Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish: this is my great argument.
Dove Cottage, Grasmere Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half-create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
Home at Grasmere, lines 991-1114, and Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 103-112, William Wordsworth, The Major Works, edited by Stephen Gill, Oxford World's Classics Paperback 2000.