The Prelude (1805)

The Prelude(1805) in its content of 13 books reveals itself as a poem of maturity. The overall gist
og this poem that the author is finally out of captivity. To support this theme, the author states
that he is coming home from the city wall's bondage. Because the Prelude can be interpreted in a
philosophical way, "bondage" can be mental, physical, or emotional stress from city life. There is
a clear and concise admiration displayed by the author in the first lines of this poem. The poem
reads "there is a blessing in the gentle breeze that/ blows...and so fourth through the 5th line. He
gives something as simple as a breeze human like qualities. This aspect is known as
personification. His deep fascination with the when allows him to expound upon it in such a way
that it comes to life right before the readers eyes on the page. Overall he is displaying his love for
nature and its physical features.

As a result of being a free man in essence, the author then goes into a self evaluation of what he
should do next. This comfort of freedom is foreign to him and he realizes that now he has some
decisions to make. The poem takes a turn here when it switches from nature appreciation to
curiosity of decision making. He is now a free man, and the possibility of what he can do is
endless. This aspect made me revert to many prison shows on television. After being a prisoner
for so long, one does not know what to do. They are so deeply embedded into being under
captivity that they don't know how to live any other life other than that of a prisoner. And the
author exemplifies these similar characteristics. He questions where he will reside and slumber?

The Prelude of 1805, Book First, Lines 1-30
The Prelude of 1805 is extremely long, so I would like to focus on Book First, Lines 1-30.

Lately in class we have been talking about whether Wordsworth intended for The Prelude to be
philosophical or not. On the one hand, it seems Wordsworth is just describing his life
experiences and going through his own thought process. On the other hand, some of
Wordsworth's words seem very advise-like, almost as if he is explaining his philosophy of life.
In my opinion, I believe The Prelude does have a philosophical context, and I believe Lines 1-30
shows this context through its story-telling and choice of words.

Lines 1-30 of the First Book seem like a story to me, with story-telling qualities. Wordsworth
describes his enjoyment of the earth, using detailed adjectives to describe his happiness. Phrases
like, "gentle breeze," "enfranchised," and "sweet stream" are used, enhancing Wordsworth's
story. This use of adjectives shows Wordsworth's quality of being a story teller, which
contributes to a philosophical context. Philosophy, in general, is a series of ideas told in stories.
Plato, for example, imparted his philosophy on the masses by telling stories that exemplified his
philosophy. Also, the Bible is a series of stories that describes Christianity. Therefore,
Wordsworth sets up The Prelude into a series of stories in order to describe his philosophy on
life.

Again, looking at the adjectives in these lines, Wordsworth's choice of words contributes to his
philosophical context. Not only does he use words to describe his moment of bliss, but he uses
certain words that allude to a philosophical intent. Words like, "half conscious," "set free," and
"is all before me" exemplify Wordsworth's view on life, or his philosophy. The words when
looked at individually and as a whole still show a philosophical background. By adding these
phrases to a story, Wordsworth conveys his philosophy of life through The Prelude.

Although I only focused on a small section of The Prelude, I still believe Lines 1-30 of Book
First exemplify Wordsworth's philosophical intent. However, the great thing about The Prelude
is that Wordsworth's intent can be constantly disputed, which I think Wordsworth would want
his readers to do.


Wordsworth's Prelude (Lines 150-169)
Wordsworths poem, The Prelude, begins by telling us about Wordsworths narrators idyllic
childhood when he lived in some sort of harmony with nature, moving easily about between the
snares he left to catch birds in the woods (31-49), the nests from which he once stole ravens
eggs (53-59), and other such scenes of balance between the young man and the environment. Yet
in the midst of this peace, Wordsworth suddenly changes his tone and foreshadows the alienation
from nature that the narrator will experience as he grows older. The first signal of this
approaching gulf might comes from the fact that this verse is set in the frosty season (150),
when the waters and crags are covered by polished ice (157). The frosty season (which the
reader understands to be winter) is a time when nature seems dead to human observers, the
greenery that we associate with the outdoors being killed by the chill, most animals being more
dormant than in warmer times, and much of the normally available water supply being at risk of
freezing (making access to it a more difficult, if not impossible, matter). This sense that these
sources of life and beauty are dormant or inaccessible (as well as the fact that winter is itself
associated with aging) plays a major part in Wordsworths argument that nature as a whole is
becoming less accessible to the narrator as he grows older. Wordsworth makes a point that his
narrator is only losing touch with nature and has not yet lost touch when his narrator does not
heed the summons of the bell tower that would call him back to the civilized world of the town
(153-154). Yet even this show of resistance is marked for terminationthough at first
Wordsworth seems to be relating himself to a wild horse that cares not for its home, he then
reveals that the horse of his metaphor is already domesticated and therefore bound to be drawn
into civilization again eventually despite his love for untamed nature (155-156). The
domesticated nature of this horse is revealed when Wordsworth shows that his horse is shod
with steel, referring to the shoes that owners put on their horses to protect their hooves (156). A
horseshoe works by preventing a horses hoof from making contact with the earth beneath it,
acting as a barrier between the horse and a form of nature, the ground itself. It is this alienating
device that Wordsworth places on his narrators feet, though in this case it is in the form of an ice
skate which the narrator and the other people who have apparently accompanied him (indicated
by the we of line 157). The ice skate also represents mans innovation being put to use to
subjugate nature, overcoming the obstacle of ice and forcing nature to serve as a means of
transportation for humans skidding across the frozen surfaces of ponds. This is a relatively
harmless device of subjugation, and Wordsworth presents it more as a childs means of play in
this verse, but it foreshadows harsher devices that man makes out of iron that are used to
domesticate nature for mans careless use. The sounds of the childrens voices create a chaotic
din (162) in the once-silent (and once-peaceful) woods and craggy peaks, and the only noise
that the narrator describes apart from this din of human voices is the sound of iron echoing
back to him from the precipices and narrow places in the cliffs (165). These echoes of manmade
sound are alien (166) to the narrator, who has grown up with little more than the sublime quiet
of nature around him. Not only does the word alien here describe the humans and mark them as
out of place in this natural haven, but the fact that these strange noises are echoing back to him
from a natural place suggests the perception of nature as the source of alien things that the
narrator will acquire as he grows into his identity as a civilized human being. To finish off this
neat package of age and alienation, Wordsworth ends the verse with a brilliant sunset as the
orange sky of evening died (169) as though to mark the rapidly approaching end of
Wordsworths days as a child living in harmony with nature, the last beautiful glimpse he will
have of a fully accessible nature for a long time.



The Prelude 1805 (Lines 1-32)

In The Prelude (1805) by William Wordsworth, we can observe the strong
relationship between man (the speaker) versus nature all throughout. On lines 1-32, the
speaker makes a deep connection with Nature; his relationship with nature evolves and
strengthens. As we begin to read, the first stanza of The Prelude of 1805 shows how
the speakers relationship with nature develops. Wordsworth uses several literary
devices along with a profound sense of sincerity and realization to express how nature
makes him feel. Through the use of various clever figures of speech, descriptive
imagery and sincere tone, Wordsworth demonstrates his intent of expressing his
personal experience with nature while strongly stressing the relationship between man
versus nature. Wordsworth shows readers that nature is the best option; he claims that
nature will save us.
Wordsworth strengthens his pointto insist on the beneficial relationship that
arises between man and naturethrough the use of alliteration, enjambment, repetition
and parallelism, to mention a few. When using repetition, Wordsworth instigates that it is
important we listen to his mind speaking to us because to himwho is also the speaker
in the poemit is important that we realize the vital role nature has played in his life. It
is thanks to nature that he has found the inner peace we all seek. We can see repetition
on line 5, O welcome messenger! O welcome friend! He is repetitively welcoming
nature into his life. The repetitive pattern continues on but becomes stronger; we see it
in the form of parallelismsentences that start off with the same structure. Lines 12, 13
and 14 all start with shall. Once again, this reinforces the welcoming of nature into his
life and leads way to how his life is already changing because of nature.
Two other key literary elements used in the introductory stanza of The Prelude
1805 (book first) are alliteration and enjambment. Wordsworth carefully applies
alliteration to beautify his poetic introduction to his greatest discovery yet. This
beautification symbolizes Wordsworths visualization of nature in his life. This beautiful
sounding stanza portrays how nature has enlightened and enhanced the speakers life.
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind (20) is one of the most beautiful lines in
the entire stanza and it is a line with not only one, but two examples of alliteration. We
hear traces along with thoughts then move on to mountings and mind. The
beauty and attention this line draws grasps the attention of readers and keeps them
engaged. Furthermore, what enhances the harmony of these first thirty-two lines is the
continuous usage of enjambment. The employment of enjambment allows his ideas to
be clearly communicated to readers. In fact, there are more sentences that continue
onto the next line than those that finish or have punctuations. This, once again, is a
clever tactic that gives readers a deeper desire to connect with the speaker and with the
speakers message. With these two strong literary devicesalliteration and
enjambmentWordsworth achieves his purpose, which is to enamor his audience with
the gifts and blessings nature has to offer.
All the literary elements used by Wordsworth in the poem come together to
create a great visual picture on the audience. Imagery is extremely important in this
poem. Not only does Wordsworth tell us how nature is enhancing his lifeas he finally
lets it in, he also shows us how beautiful this nature through detail and description.
Wordsworth does not just tell the audience, he shows themwhich makes fortifies the
delivery of his message. Wordsworth allows us to be in the scene with him: Oh there is
blessing in this gentle breeze, That blows from the green fields and from the clouds;
And from the sky . . . (1-3). The connection Wordsworth attempts to make with the
audience is significantly important because it allows the audience to step in
Wordsworths shoes for a brief moment, to feel what he feels when he befriends nature
and allows it to come into his life. Imagery lets readers place themselves in the scene
with the speaker, experience what he feels and accept the message he communicates
to his audience.
Regardless of the lack of rhyme scheme, Wordsworth carefully writes the first
stanza so that it still flows and sounds beautifully; this is also due to sincerity in the
speakers tone. Wordsworth purposely uses his sincerity so that readers develop a
deeper sense of pathos and so they connect easily with the intended messagethe
importance nature plays in our lives. The speaker lets us in his most intimate thoughts,
inside of his mind, thus we feel more intimate and closer to him. While Wordsworth
shares his thoughts all throughout the first stanza, lines 6-10 show us exactly how open
the speaker is being with this audience: A captive greets thee, coming from a house; Of
bondage, from yon citys 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 (6-10).
Wordsworth sincerely tells us he felt imprisoned, and now, nature has freed him from
the chains and walls of living encapsulated in the city. Nature helped the speaker
discover his inner piece.
While he may have not felt accomplished in writing The Prelude, he did a
beautiful job in writing it. He intentionally expresses the autobiography of his intellect
he shows us his great poetic abilities. Wordsworth keeps readers moving in only one
direction, forward. The first thirty-two lines have a funnel effect: there are tons of things
and thoughts running through his mind yet he tries to straighten them out. His
reasoningor solutionto the walls and imprisonment he talks about is nature. Nature
brings him the peace and happiness he had been seeking all his life. The opening
stanza of The Prelude of 1805 goes directly to the point Wordsworth wishes to
sharehe wants the world to know the power nature holds in saving a human soul.

The Prelude: William Wordsworth - Summary and Critical Analysis
The Prelude begun in 1799 and was completed in 1805, but was published a year after the poets
death in 1850. In this work the poet describes his experiences of growing up as a man and a poet
with fullness, closeness and laborious anxiety that is unique in English literature. The Prelude is
the finest work of Wordsworths great creative period. Wordsworth conceived the idea of writing
a history of the growth of his own mind, and the various texts of the poem cover a very long
period in the poets life during which his style and opinion both changed considerably.

William Wordsworth
The Prelude is in fact the first long autobiographical poem written in a drawn out process of self-
exploration. Wordsworth worked his way towards modern psychological understanding of his
own nature and more broadly of human nature. Third, he places poetry at the center of human
experience. This introspective account of his own development was completed in 1805 and, after
substantial revision, published posthumously in 1850. Many critics rank it as Wordsworths
greatest work. The Prelude begins with an account of the poets childhood in the English Lake
Country.
He first gives a record of that innocent life out of which his poetry grew; then he goes on to
explore how the mind develops. He reveals a strange world, and the deeper we dive into it, the
stronger it becomes. Like the short poem, besides touching upon many other things, this long
poem traces the development of the poets attitudes to nature, his poetic genius, and his
understanding of fellow-beings and the spirit of the universe; he moves from the typical
childhood animal pleasures, through adolescent, sensual passion for the wild and gloomy, to the
adult awareness of the relation of our perception of the natural world, and finally to our sense of
the human and moral world. Wordsworth basically tries to recapture and record the full and
intense life lived through the senses as a child and as a youth. The child or the first stage is
characterized by a vague understanding of the influence of the natures moral influence because
the child is indulged in mere bodily pleasures; the adolescent phase is marked with dizzy
raptures; he speaks of youthful love of freedom and liberty, which he enjoyed in rambles through
the woods and on the mountain paths where he did not feel fettered by the claims of the society
and schoolwork. But those pleasures soon ended naturally after the youth began to understand
human suffering so that, back in the nature, he began to make spiritual interpretation of Nature
as a living entity, by following whose ways he could get rid of the eternal problems of human
misery. At one phase of his youth, Wordsworth became strongly attracted to the cause of the
French Revolution, feeling that he was tied emotionally and spiritually to the popular struggle
against the monarchy. But the destructiveness of the revolution and the popular indifference to
the real causes and the real heroes, and the corrupted nature of the leading revolutionaries,
disillusioned him, and he returned home spiritually broken, feeling that the innocent blood has
poisoned the real causes of liberty. At that phase of life, he turned to the nature, finding there not
only the solace but also the law and order lacking in the human society. Wordsworth opposed the
mechanical reasoning of the materialistic sciences and the logical philosophy as too superficial to
probe into the sciences and the logical philosophy as too superficial to probe into the meaning
and experience of life and nature. Wordsworth has said, To every natural form. I gave a
moral life. His theory has been called one of natural pantheism for this reason.
The Prelude is an autobiographical poem but it is not only the poets personal confessions; it is
an account of the growth of a poets mind. In it he tells the story of his inner life from the earliest
childhood up to 1798. But the events do not always follow each of the chronological or even
logical order, for the poem is shaped by a kind of internal logic of the growth of mind rather than
by the sequence of eternal events. The development is roughly chronological but even as the
poem has progressed well into adulthood, at significant points, reference is made back to his
childhood contrasting later attitudes, or illustrating important aspects of his theme. The poets
faith is however based on intuition, and not on reasoning, to understand or analyze life or nature.
But his mysticism is not an escape from common experience, with the help of some kind of
fancy, but a probing deep into common things and experience. His poetry has in fact been called
the highest poetry of the lowest and prosaic things. According to Wordsworths The Prelude,
nature had two basic formative influences on the poets mind: one was of inspiration with its
beauty and joy, and the other one was that of fear and awe-inspiring influences that disciplined
his mind since early in life.
The Prelude presents a unique and original understanding of min, life, creativity and such other
things in its examination and linking of the factors both important and trivial, which go to make
up a complex human personality. The poet indeed has an amazing gift for grasping the
significance of the apparently insignificant, and seeing all things as part of a meaningful whole.
He tries to show us what he and his poetry are made of, and they are made not only of great
events and emotions of marriage and passion, and the French revolution, but of small things that
a less observant or creative mind would have forgotten: of boating expeditions, of a chance
meeting with old sailors, or dreams, of the noise of the wind in the mountains, of the sight of the
ash trees outside his bedroom window.
It is interesting to note that while The Prelude is a poem rooted in the past, a culmination of
many traditions of thought and culture, it is at the same time that the first great modern poem. In
it Wordsworth is essentially concerned with human nature, with aspects of consciousness and
being that are still relevant to our modern interest and predicaments. The Prelude presents the
poet in the quest for his identity. It shows that Wordsworth is trying to seek a point of stability
within himself. It is an attempt to establish a principle of continuity and equilibrium within
change. He said, The vacancy between me (present) and those days which yet have such self
presence in my mind is so great that sometimes when I think of them I see two consciousnesses,
the consciousness of myself and that of some other being in me. This theme has indeed
obsessed the modern imagination, replacing the quest of Everyman or Bunyans Pilgrim. In so
far as The Prelude is concerned with the growth of a poets mind, it anticipates all these modern
works, which might be lumped together under the common title of A Portrait of an Artist t as a
Young man.
The Prelude is a modern poem in another sense; it is a self-reflective poem. By this we mean a
poem that has a part of its subject the writing of the poem itself. The Prelude is a poem that
incorporates the discovery of its ars poetica. Its surely the true ancestor of all those subsequent
works of art that coil back upon themselves. Both the beginning and the end of the double, quest,
the voyage of self-exploration and the effort to articulate the experience are perhaps those spots
of time included the earliest moments of moral and spiritual awareness and they are usually
associated with intensely felt responses to the nature even when he was a child.

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