“Thanks to the heart by which we live …”

Thanks to the heart by which we live,
Thanks to the tenderness,
its joys, its fears:
To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

— from William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, 1807



Woodcut illustration for George Meredith’s “The Crown of Love,” by John Everett Millais, Joseph Swain, 1859

Leave a comment