Quote by William Wordsworth: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

Wordsworth defines poetry as a natural outpouring of intense emotions, but importantly, these emotions are processed and understood in a calm, reflective state. It emphasizes that raw feeling becomes art through thoughtful introspection.

The preface to Lyrical Ballads is a foundational text of English Romanticism, outlining its aesthetic principles and a new approach to poetry focused on common life and natural emotion.

English Romantic poet who, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, launched the Romantic Age in English literature with Lyrical Ballads in 1798. His long autobiographical poem The Prelude is considered one of the great works of English Romanticism.