William Wordsworth

Books, Culture, Cumbria, England, Heritage, Lake District, Sách & Tri thức, UK news, William Wordsworth

Future of William Wordsworth’s Lake District home secured for the public

Romantic poet’s Rydal Mount and Gardens, marketed for over £2.5m, will remain open under Wordsworth Trust

It was the family home where William Wordsworth hosted Alfred, Lord Tennyson, lived as poet laureate and worked on his epic autobiographical poem The Prelude.

Now, after a long period of decline in visitor numbers, Rydal Mount and Gardens has been saved from descending into the “half-choked with willow flowers and weeds” state that Wordsworth described in his 1814 poem The Excursion – and will be preserved by a charity that will ensure it remains open to the public.

thanhtoong0
March 19, 2026

Books, Culture, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức, William Wordsworth

Poem of the week: To Wordsworth by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The radical young poet’s backhanded tribute to the older writer is a stern judgment on his lapsed political idealism

To Wordsworth

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, —
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou should cease to be.

thanhtoong0
February 9, 2026