| James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902. | | | | April 7 | | Wordsworth | | By Lord Byron (1788–1824) |
| | From “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”
(Born April 7, 1770)
NEXT comes the dull disciple of thy school, | |
| That mild apostate from poetic rule, | |
| The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay | |
| As soft as evening in his favorite May, | |
| Who warns his friend “to shake off toil and trouble, | 5 |
| And quit his books for fear of growing double;” | |
| Who, both by precept and example, shows | |
| That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose; | |
| Convincing all, by demonstration plain, | |
| Poetic souls delight in prose insane; | 10 |
| And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme | |
| Contain the essence of the true sublime. | |
| Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy, | |
| The idiot mother of “an idiot boy,” | |
| A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way, | 15 |
| And, like his bard, confounded night with day, | |
| So close on each pathetic part he dwells, | |
| And each adventure so sublimely tells, | |
| That all who view the “idiot in his glory,” | |
| Conceive the bard the hero of the story. | 20 | | | |
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