William Wordsworth belonged to a chosen band of poets for whom poetry was a priesthood, displayed in his unerring devotion to his art. He nourished his unique poetic gift by daily intimacy with Nature. It is Wordworth's peculiar achievement to reveal the impulses at work behind the outward beauty of Nature, and to manifest its sustaining influence upon the spirit of man.

The forty-one poems in this collection cover a range of subjects but all reflect Wordsworth's fundamental philosophy that poetry should be the embodiment of emotion recollected in tranquility.