All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
ATTRIBUTION:
William Wordsworth (1770–1850), British poet. Lyrical Ballads, preface, 2nd edition (1801).
This sentiment, which is a central tenet in Wordsworth’s criticism, has parallels in Schiller, Ueber Bürgers Gedichte, as well as Coleridge’s Notebooks, in which he speaks of “recalling passion in tranquillity.”
