From the Prelude
BOOK ONE
Introduction—Childhood and School - Time

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze
That blows from the green fields and from the clouds
And from the sky: it beats against my cheek,
And seems half-conscious of the joy it gives.
O welcome Messenger! O welcome Friend!
A captive greets thee, coming from a house
Of bondage, from yon City’s walls set free,
A prison where he hath been long immured.
Now I am free, enfranchised and at large,
May fix my habitation where I will. 10
What dwelling shall receive me? In what Vale
Shall be my harbour? Underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home, and what sweet stream
Shall with its murmurs lull me to my rest?
The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again;
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind 20
Come fast upon me: it is shaken off,
As by miraculous gift ‘tis shaken off,
That burthen of my own unnatural self,
The heavy weight of many a weary day
Not mine, and such as were not made for me.
Long months of peace (if such bold word accord
With any promises of human life),
Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
Are mine in prospect, whither shall I turn
By road or pathway or through open field, 30
Or shall a twig or any floating thing
Upon the river, point me out my course?
Enough that I am free; for months to come
May dedicate myself to chosen tasks;
May quit the tiresome sea and dwell on shore,
If not a Settler on the soil, at least
To drink wild water, and to pluck green herbs,
And gather fruits fresh from their native bough.
Nay more, if I may trust myself, this hour
Hath brought a gift that consecrates my joy; 40
For I, methought, while the sweet breath of Heaven
Was blowing on my body, felt within
A corresponding mild creative breeze,
A vital breeze which travelled gently on
O’er things which it had made, and is become
A tempest, a redundant energy
Vexing its own creation. ‘Tis a power
That does not come unrecognized, a storm,
Which, breaking up a long-continued frost
Brings with it vernal promises, the hope 50
Of active days, of dignity and thought,
Of prowess in an honorable field,
Pure passions, virtue, knowledge, and delight,
The holy life of music and of verse.
. . . . . .

—Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all Rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse’s song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams? For this, didst Thou,
O Derwent, travelling over the green Plains
Near my ‘sweet Birthplace’, didst thou, beauteous Stream,
Make ceaseless music through the night and day
Which with its steady cadence, tempering 280
Our human waywardness, composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Among the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A knowledge, a dim earnest, of the calm
Which Nature breathes among the hills and groves
When, having left his Mountains, to the Towers
Of Cockermouth that beauteous River came,
Behind my Father’s House he passed, close by,
Along the margin of our Terrace Walk.
He was a Playmate whom we dearly loved. 290
Oh! many a time have I, a five years’ Child,
A naked Boy, in one delightful Rill,
A little Mill-race severed from his stream,
Made one long bathing of a summer’s day,
Basked in the sun, and plunged, and basked again
Alternate all a summer’s day, or coursed
Over the sandy fields, leaping through groves
Of yellow grunsel, or when crag and hill,
The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height,
Were bronzed with a deep radiance, stood alone 300
Beneath the sky, as if I had been born
On Indian Plains, and from my Mother’s hut
Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport,
A naked Savage, in the thunder shower.

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear;
Much favored in my birthplace, and no less
In that beloved Vale to which, erelong,
I was transplanted. Well I call to mind
(‘Twas at an early age, ere I had seen 310
Nine summers) when upon the mountain slope
The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapped
The last autumnal crocus, ‘twas my joy
To wander half the night among the Cliffs
And the smooth Hollows, where the woodcocks ran
Along the open turf In thought and wish
That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,
I was a fell destroyer. On the heights
Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied
My anxious visitation, hurrying on, 320
Still hurrying, hurrying onward; moon and stars
Were shining o’er my head; I was alone,
And seemed to be a trouble to the peace
That was among them. Sometimes it befel
In these night-wanderings, that a strong desire
O’erpowered my better reason, and the bird
Which was the captive of another’s toils
Became my prey; and, when the deed was done
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds 330
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Nor less in springtime when on southern banks
The shining sun had from his knot of leaves
Decoyed the primrose flower, and when the Vales
And woods were warm, was I a plunderer then
In the high places, on the lonesome peaks
Where’er, among the mountains and the winds,
The Mother Bird had built her lodge. Though mean
My object, and inglorious, yet the end 340
Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung
Above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill sustained, and almost, as it seemed,
Suspended by the blast which blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag; Oh! at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ears! the sky seemed not a sky
Of earth, and with what motion moved the clouds! 350


The mind of Man is framed even like the breath
And harmony of music. There is a dark
Invisible workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, and makes them move
In one society. Ah me! that all
The terrors, all the early miseries,
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes, that all
The thoughts and feelings which have been infused
Into my mind, should ever have made up
The calm existence that is mine when I 360
Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!
Thanks likewise for the means! But I believe
That Nature, oftentimes, when she would frame
A favoured Being, from his earliest dawn
Of infancy doth open out the clouds,
As at the touch of lightning, seeking him
With gentlest visitation; not the less,
Though haply aiming at the self-same end,
Does it delight her sometimes to employ
Severer interventions, ministry 370
More palpable, and so she dealt with me.

One evening (surely I was led by her)
I went alone into a Shepherd’s Boat,
A Skiff that to a Willow tree was tied
Within a rocky Cave, its usual home.
‘Twas by the shores of Patterdale, a Vale
Wherein I was a Stranger, thither come
A School-boy Traveller, at the Holidays.
Forth rambled from the Village Inn alone,
No sooner had I sight of this small Skiff, 380
Discovered thus by unexpected chance,
Than I unloosed her tether and embarked.
The moon was up, the Lake was shining clear
Among the hoary mountains; from the Shore
I pushed, and struck the oars and struck again
In cadence, and my little Boat moved on
Even like a Man who walks with stately step
Though bent on speed. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure; not without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my Boat move on, 390
Leaving behind her still on either side
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. A rocky Steep uprose
Above the Cavern of the Willow tree
And now, as suited one who proudly rowed
With his best skill, I fixed a steady view
Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,
The bound of the horizon, for behind
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky. 400
She was an elfin Pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent Lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my Boat
Went heaving through the water, like a Swan;
When from behind that craggy Steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck, and struck again,
And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff
Rose up between me and the stars, and still, 410
With measured motion, like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the Cavern of the Willow tree.
There, in her mooring-place, I left my Bark,
And, through the meadows homeward went, with grave
And serious thoughts; and after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts 420
There was a darkness, call it solitude,
Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes
Of hourly objects, images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty Forms that do not live
Like living men moved slowly through my mind
By day and were the trouble of my dreams.

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul that art the Eternity of Thought!
That giv’st to forms and images a breath 430
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize 440
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At noon, and ‘mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling Lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
‘Twas mine among the fields both day and night, 450
And by the waters all the summer long.

And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons:—happy time
It was, indeed, for all of us; to me
— It was a time of rapture: clear and loud
The village clock tolled six; I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse,
That cares not for its home.—All shod with steel, 460
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chace
And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The Pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din,
Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees, and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound 470
Of melancholy, not unnoticed; while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.


Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the image of a star
That gleamed upon the ice. And oftentimes
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks, on either side, 480
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion; then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short, yet still the solitary Cliffs
Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round.
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

Ye Presences of Nature, in the sky 490
Or on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!
And Souls of lonely places! can I think
A vulgar hope was yours when Ye employed
Such ministry, when Ye through many a year
Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
Impressed upon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire, and thus did make
The surface of the universal earth
With triumph, and delight, and hope, and fear, 500
Work like a sea?

Not uselessly employed,
I might pursue this theme through every change
Of exercise and play, to which the year
Did summon us in its delightful round.
We were a noisy crew, the sun in heaven
Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours,
Nor saw a race in happiness and joy
More worthy of the fields where they were sown.
I would record with no reluctant voice
The woods of autumn and their hazel bowers 510
With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line,
True symbol of the foolishness of hope,
Which with its strong enchantment led us on
By rocks and pools, shut out from every star
All the green summer, to forlorn cascades
Among the windings of the mountain brooks.
—Unfading recollections! at this hour
The heart is almost mine with which I felt
From some hill-top, on sunny afternoons
The Kite high up among the fleecy clouds 520
Pull at its rein, like an impatient Courser,
Or, from the meadows sent on gusty days,
Beheld her breast the wind, then suddenly
Dashed headlong; and rejected by the storm.

Ye lowly Cottages in which we dwelt,
A ministration of your own was yours,
A sanctity, a safeguard, and a love!
Can I forget you, being as ye were
So beautiful among the pleasant fields
In which ye stood? Or can I here forget 530
The plain and seemly countenance with which
Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye
Delights and exultations of your own.
Eager and never weary we pursued
Our home amusements by the warm peat-fire
At evening, when with pencil and with slate,
In square divisions parcelled out, and all
With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o’er,
We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head
In strife too humble to be named in Verse. 540
Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,
Cherry or maple, sate in close array,
And to the combat, Lu or Whist, led on
A thick-ribbed Army; not as in the world
Neglected and ungratefully thrown by
Even for the very service they had wrought,
But husbanded through many a long campaign.
Uncouth assemblage was it, where no few
Had changed their functions, some, plebeian cards,
Which Fate beyond the promise of their birth 550
Had glorified, and called to represent
The persons of departed Potentates.
Oh! with what echoes on the Board they fell!
Ironic Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts, Diamonds, Spades,
A congregation piteously akin.
Cheap matter did they give to boyish wit,
Those sooty knaves, precipitated down
With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of Heaven;
The paramount Ace, a moon in her eclipse;
Queens, gleaming through their splendour’s last decay; 560
And Monarchs, surly at the wrongs sustained
By royal visages. Meanwhile, abroad
The heavy rain was falling, or the frost
Raged bitterly, with keen and silent tooth,
And, interrupting oft the impassioned game,
From Esthwaite’s neighbouring Lake the splitting ice,
While it sank down towards the water, sent,
Among the meadows and the hills, its long
And dismal yellings, like the noise of wolves
When they are howling round the Bothnic Main. 570

Nor, sedulous as I have been to trace
How Nature by extrinsic passion first
Peopled my mind with beauteous forms or grand
And made me love them, may I well forget
How other pleasures have been mine, and joys
Of subtler origin; how I have felt,
Not seldom, even in that tempestuous time,
Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense
Which seem, in their simplicity, to own
An intellectual charm, that calm delight 580
Which, if I err not, surely must belong
To those first-born affinities that fit
Our new existence to existing things,
And, in our dawn of being, constitute
The bond of union betwixt life and joy.

Yes, I remember, when the changeful earth,
And twice five seasons on my mind had stamped
The faces of the moving year, even then,
A Child, I held unconscious intercourse
With the eternal Beauty, drinking in 590
A pure organic pleasure from the lines
Of curling mist, or from the level plain
Of waters coloured by the steady clouds.
The Sands of Westmoreland, the Creeks and Bays
Of Cumbria’s rocky limits, they can tell
How when the Sea threw off his evening shade
And to the Shepherd’s huts beneath the crags
Did send sweet notice of the rising moon,
How I have stood, to fancies such as these,
Engrafted in the tenderness of thought, 600
A stranger, linking with the spectacle
No conscious memory of a kindred sight,
And bringing with me no peculiar sense
Of quietness or peace, yet I have stood,
Even while mine eye has moved o’er three long leagues
Of shining water, gathering, as it seemed,
Through every hair-breadth of that field of light,
New pleasure, like a bee among the flowers.

Thus, often in those fits of vulgar joy
Which, through all seasons, on a child’s pursuits 610
Are prompt attendants, ‘mid that giddy bliss
Which, like a tempest, works along the blood
And is forgotten; even then I felt
Gleams like the flashing of a shield. The earth
And common face of Nature spake to me
Rememberable things; sometimes, ‘tis true,
By chance collisions and quaint accidents
Like those ill-sorted unions, work supposed
Of evil-minded fairies, yet not vain,
Nor profitless, if haply they impressed 620
Collateral objects and appearances,
Albeit lifeless then, and doomed to sleep
Until maturer seasons called them forth
To impregnate and to elevate the mind.
—And if the vulgar joy by its own weight
Wearied itself out of the memory,
The scenes which were a witness of that joy
Remained, in their substantial lineaments
Depicted on the brain, and to the eye
Were visible, a daily sight. And thus 630
By the impressive discipline of fear,
By pleasure and repeated happiness,
So frequently repeated, and by force
Of obscure feelings representative
Of joys that were forgotten, these same scenes,
So beauteous and majestic in themselves,
Though yet the day was distant, did at length
Become habitually dear, and all
Their hues and forms were by invisible links
Allied to the affections. 640

I began
My story early, feeling, as I fear,
The weakness of a human love, for days
Disowned by memory, ere the birth of spring
Planting my snowdrops among winter snows.
Nor will it seem to thee, my Friend! so prompt
In sympathy, that I have lengthened out,
With fond and feeble tongue, a tedious tale.
Meanwhile, my hope has been that I might fetch
Invigorating thoughts from former years,
Might fix the wavering balance of my mind, 650
And haply meet reproaches, too, whose power
May spur me on, in manhood now mature,
To honorable toil. Yet should these hopes
Be vain, and thus should neither I be taught
To understand myself, nor thou to know
With better knowledge how the heart was framed
Of him thou lovest, need I dread from thee
Harsh judgments, if I am so loth to quit
Those recollected hours that have the charm
Of visionary things, and lovely forms 660
And sweet sensations, that throw back our life
And almost make our Infancy itself
A visible scene, on which the sun is shining?
. . . . . . . . . .

Some Background

• William Wordsworth started writing this in Germany in 1799. By 1804, he had writen five books. He expanded that to 13 books and fnished it in 1805. However, he kept coming back to revise the poem all his life.
• The Prelude was written to go with "The Recluse", which was never finished.
• The Prelue was published shortly after the poet's death.
• This poem was seem as original and unique at the time because nobody had looked back at past experience explaining their poetry before. Wordsworth was also one of the earliest poets to write about normal things without using all the complicated language usually seen in poems.
• The Prelude was written during William Wordsworth trip to Germany with his sister Dorothy, and good friend Coleridge. It was during 1798 to 1799, when Wordsworth and Dorothy journeyed to Goslar where he started writing The Prelude. It was also during this time where he wrote "the Lucy poems".
  

Themes

• Solitude
• Memory
• Child hood
• Freedom
• and, Nature.
• Harmony between dark and light

Solitude is a main part of this poem... we can see this due to the motif in the poem. Examples in his recalling of him time in the mountains.

Memory is a large part of the poem, due to this being a autobiography, memory is apparent all throughout the prelude.

Childhood, apparent in the title and throughout the text, is obviously a main theme.

Freedom : This theme also pops up throughout the prelude. First time we see it, is in the first part- talking about how he's free of bondage, "from yon City's walls set free"...

Nature is also frequently mentioned in the poem, though mostly throughout the imagery.

Harmony between dark and light is mentioned and at the end. Wordsworth talks about (from lines 630 - 640) how "by the impressive discipline of fear, by pleasure and repeated happiness...their hues and forms were by invisible links allied to the affections." This shows us how the only way to be fully aware of all around us, we have to experience both sides of light and dark.


Lines 372~427

• This is a famous stanza.
• This bit tells a story of a time when Wordsworth stole a boat to row out on the Lake of Patterdale. He was guilty but also feels pleasure. He then becomes afraid because he thinks that the cliff beside the lake has come alive and “strode after me”. He returns the boat and for many days, he couldn’t forget the terror.
• There are a few themes that are shown in this stanza.
• beauty of Nature. In the first line, "one evening (surely I was led by her)". Here Wordsworth personifys the evening to "her" and so shows the beauty of nature.
• strength of nature. In line 409, "the huge cliff... strode after me." He is shown the strength of nature when he thinks the cliffs are alive and growing bigger.
• power of conscience. Line 425. "huge and mighty Forms... were the trouble of my dreams." He felt guilty of stealing the boat and he couldn't forget it for a long time. He was haunted in his nightmares. His guilt might also have led him to imagine the cliffs grew.
• In lines 372~387, there is a lot of imagery. We can easily imagine the setting of the lake with the boat and willow tree.
• In line 404, there is a simile, "like a swan", describing the speed of his boat.
• This stanza is described very vividly.

Essay Practice questions

1. Discuss the use of imagery and symbolism in Prelude book I- School time and childhood, and show to what extent it is effective.

2. Discuss what theme's are discussed in the prelude, with reference to the text. Also, discuss what links there are to Wordsworth's other poems.

3. "Transcendentalism is a newly founded belief and practice that involves man's interaction with nature, and the idea that man belongs to one universal and benign omnipresence know as the oversoul."

An essay question could be how Transcendenatlism is apparent in Wordsworth's Prelude Book 1, and to what extent it is?

Conflicts in the prelude

1. Fear is a main conflict in the prelude, recalling the fear of the mountains from the past.

2. The mind is also a conflict in the prelude. Wordsworth has many conflicts within the "adult" frame of mind -"There is a dark
Invisible workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, " (line 352)

3. Another conflict is that of Solitude. Although it is mentioned throughout the poem, it firstly appears as a conflict in lines 420-428, when he is recalling his memory of being lost in the Walsh mountains, out on a moor. "There was a darkness, call it solitude,/ Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes/ Of hourly objects..."

We can see from these lines, the impact of solitude upon Wordsworth mind at that point of time, making this a personal conflict.


Biography

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2358.html
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww286.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prelude