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William Wordsworth

Credited with launching the Romantic Age in English poetry along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, the second of five children. After

French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement. Reprinted from “The Friend”

by William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

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16

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,

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