dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Book of the Sonnet  »  William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

I. Pleasant, Voluntary Prison of the Sonnet

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

NUNS fret not at their convent’s narrow room;

And hermits are contented with their cells;

And students with their pensive citadels;

Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,

Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,

High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,

Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:

In truth the prison unto which we doom

Ourselves no prison is; and hence to me,

In sundry moods, ’t was pastime to be bound

Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground,

Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)

Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I have found.