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Home  »  The Book of Georgian Verse  »  William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, I

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

TAX not the royal Saint with vain expense,

With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned—

Albeit labouring for a scanty band

Of white robed Scholars only—this immense

And glorious Work of fine intelligence!

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore

Of nicely-calculated less or more;

So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense

These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof

Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,

Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;

Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof

That they were born for immortality.