Identify yesterday’s quotation

It was my title for the little homage to men yesterday:”the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” is part of William Wordsworth’s definition of poetry from the Lyrical Ballads, the Preface, wherein the poet writes what became the Romantic manifesto for poetry.

Recall that Romantics glorified feelings and objected to unemotional, dry, intellectual writing. Spirit trumphed mind and skill. Of course, other characteristics applied, but most can be contrasted with the features of Neoclassical poetry of the preceding 18th century.

Here are a few examples:

]Neoclassical            Romantic
urbanity                      rural life, nature
intellect                      feelings
logic                           mysticism
adult                           child
control                       spontaneity
now                            past
familiarity                  foreign, exotic

The Preface is must reading for lovers of literature and should be interesting for just about anyone.  This link is from Bartleby’s ed. of the Harvard Classics.