Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Original Text
William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822).
2With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned--
3Albeit labouring for a scanty band
4Of white-robed Scholars only--this immense
5And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
6Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
7Of nicely-calculated less or more;
8So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
9These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
10Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
11Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
12Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die;
13Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
14That they were born for immortality.

Notes

1] This poem, from a series of 132 sonnets mostly written in 1821, may have been written in 1820, when Wordsworth visited his brother Christopher (Master of Trinity) at Cambridge. It is for that reason that it precedes the other two, in spite of the fact that in the series it comes after both. "It struck me that certain points in the Ecclesiastical History of our Country might advantageously be presented to view in verse. Accordingly, I took up the subject, and what I now offer to the reader was the result" (Wordsworth, with reference to the whole series). In later editions these poems were known as Ecclesiastical Sonnets.
royal Saint: Henry VI. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1822
RPO poem Editors
J. R. MacGillivray
RPO Edition
3RP 2.398.