Poem by William Wordsworth

Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned--
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only--this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality. 

1. Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture Painted by Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart
2. Alice Fell, Or Poverty
3. Brook! Whose Society the Poet Seeks
4. To the Memory of Raisley Calvert
5. Rural Architecture

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