And now it would content me to yield up
Those lofty hopes awhile, for present gifts
Of humbler industry. But, O dear Friend!
The Poet, gentle creature as he is,
Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times...
Here, Wordsworth puts forth an argument about the vocation of poetry. Rather than situate it as merely a skill to be learned, he contrasts it with "humbler industry," implying that poetry is more mysterious and less practical than another trade. Moreover, the speaker explains, he'd happily give up his dreams of artistry in exchange for a more practical set of skills, but it's not up to him. Poetry is portrayed here as a destiny rather than a choice, meaning that the identity of poet isn't something that can be casually taken on—it's a calling and a way of life. Moreover, Wordsworth compares the figure of the poet to that of the lover, implying that poets are driven by passion and devotion.
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me.
Throughout Book First, the speaker describes the liveliness and beauty of the natural world as he experienced it in childhood. But here, nature seems to gain a new and formidable agency. The natural world becomes animated and infused with a kind of pantheistic divinity. It has the power to watch, follow, and act upon the speaker. In this moment, the speaker's desire to capture nature in poetry becomes less a matter of mere descriptive vividness, and more a matter of navigating a complex, two-sided relationship. Meanwhile, while the cliffs seem to judge the speaker for the act of stealing the boat (at least as far as the speaker understands), it is the choice to steal the boat and sneak away into nature that ultimately leads to this experience of profound growth for the speaker. In other words, the speaker gains solitude by rejecting human society's rules, and that solitude is frightening but valuable.
...so wide appears
The vacancy between me and those days
Which yet have such self-presence in my mind,
That sometimes, when I think of it, I seem
Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself
And of some other Being...
At the start of Book Second, the speaker wrestles with one of the issues at the heart of the entire Prelude: that of his present self's relationship to his past self. This relationship is full of contradictions, which the speaker pinpoints in this passage. On the one hand, memories of the past are absolutely core to his current being. However, the way he describes those memories' relevance is through the phrase "self-presence in my mind"—that is, he describes the past as having an autonomous existence, a consciousness of its own that nevertheless chooses to exist inside the speaker's mind. Despite the constant presence of the past, it doesn't feel like something that happened to the speaker. Instead, the version of the speaker who played with his childhood friends feels like a different person, albeit one with an intimate relationship to the speaker himself.
...oh, then, the calm
And dead still water lay upon my mind
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
Never before so beautiful, sank down
Into my heart, and held me like a dream.
Here, Wordsworth describes the experience of dropping a friend off on a small island and sailing away while the friend, all alone, plays his flute. The incident is revealing in a number of ways. It touches upon the idea that solitude and immersion in nature are valuable in creating art, whether musical or poetic. Furthermore, because the speaker and his friends construct this experience so deliberately—rowing to the island, leaving the musician there, and departing—we can see that the speaker is already something of an artist, carefully creating beauty through purposeful, effortful work. Meanwhile, the metaphorical language here is striking and evocative. Wordsworth describes this moment of beauty as a heavy, almost suffocating force that almost physically overtakes the young speaker. The water is "dead" and "still," and rather than being positioned beneath the floating speaker, it lies on top of his mind. The pleasure he feels is a "weight," and the sky "sank" and "held" the speaker. Altogether, these descriptions depict this moment as having force and corporeality.
There's not a man that lives who hath not known
His God-like hours.
While reading the speaker's account of his distaste for social conventions and his love of solitude, it's easy to think that he's establishing himself as an exception, superior to his peers. However, this wouldn't be an entirely accurate assessment. The speaker does consider himself to be unusually in touch with nature's sublime side, but this isn't, he suggests, because of any innate superiority to others. Instead, it's a result of both temperament and good luck. As he notes, both immersion in nature and parental love are important parts of becoming a sensitive adult with access to emotionally transformative experiences. Those who have enjoyed both nature and parental affection, like the speaker, owe compassion to those who haven't been so lucky. Regardless, as the speaker notes here, everyone has the capacity to experience transcendence. Part of being human, in other words, is the ability to feel that one is more than, or different from, humanity.
With those delicious rivers, solemn heights,
And mountains; ranging like a fowl of the air,
I was ill-tutored for captivity
Here, the speaker compares life in college (and perhaps life in any urban, institutional, or highly regulated setting) to captivity. This is in itself intriguing, since he has just spent several stanzas describing the luxuriousness and comfort of life at Cambridge. His metaphor hints that comfort can be restrictive and unpleasant. But the phrase "ill-tutored" is equally surprising. For one thing, it contains a light irony. While describing his experience at a place of teaching and learning, he chooses to use the word "tutored," hinting that even an illustrious education could not train him to reject nature. This diction also indicates that the ability to withstand captivity and restriction must be deliberately taught and learned. The speaker, because he grew up in a rustic setting, is behind his peers in terms of learning this skill: he cannot fully adapt to "captivity."
As one who hangs, down-bending from the side
Of a slow-moving Boat, upon the breast
Of a still water, solacing himself
With such discoveries as his eye can make,
Beneath him, in the bottom of the deeps,
Sees many beauteous sights, weeds, fishes, flowers,
Grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more;
Yet often is perplex'd, and cannot part
The shadow from the substance
Here, the speaker describes the odd experience of returning to a place one knows well after a long period away from it. He uses the extended simile of a traveler in a boat, unable to separate the objects underwater from the reflections of those above it—including his own body. For the speaker, it's no longer quite possible to see his home as he did when he was immersed in it. Instead, he experiences it at a remove, examining what was once so familiar as to go unnoticed through the lens of his new experiences, and indeed his new identity. Elements of his old life appear to have changed, but he isn't sure that it's not in fact he who has changed during his time away. This passage is a vivid reminder of the way Wordsworth values subjectivity. He is deeply concerned with the ways in which a narrator's identity can dictate a narrative—and even with the ways in which the moment from which a narrator speaks dictates that narrative.
Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
And of the men that framed them, whether known
Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
That I should here assert their rights, attest
Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
Their benediction.
Here, Wordsworth purposefully honors the memories of all those authors, artists, and poets who have influenced and touched the lives of individuals. He is careful to acknowledge not only artists who remain famous, but also those who go unremembered. After all, as he notes in a nearby passage, all art and all people will eventually be forgotten. Here, the speaker takes a stand—futile though it may be—against the inevitability of impermanence. Art and artists matter and are deserving of praise, no matter how long their individual legacies last. It is also possible to see this passage as an implicit statement of faith in the Prelude itself: by praising poetry within a work of poetry (which is in itself about a poet's life), Wordsworth asserts the importance of his project.
And, though full oft the objects of our love
Were false, and in their splendour overwrought,
Yet, surely, at such time no vulgar power
Was working in us—nothing less, in truth,
Than that most noble attribute of man,
Though yet untutored and inordinate,
That wish for something loftier...
Here, the speaker recounts an old pastime: walking on the shore of a lake with a childhood friend and happily reciting lines of poetry. He subtly advances a somewhat surprising notion. The speaker claims that passion and striving are laudable, regardless of their objects. In fact, he suggests, the somewhat undirected and ill-considered nature of his youthful passions actually added to their beauty, since they were products of a certain unobstructed authenticity. The mere desire for something that goes beyond the limitations of the everyday is both universal and noble. As people get older (he implies) they might become more discriminating in their desires, but the fervent quality of that desire can be watered down. It is important to preserve that ferventness, even as one ages.
But t'was a time when Europe was rejoiced,
France standing on top of golden hours,
And human nature seeming born again.
When the speaker travels to France to walk the Alps, he finds himself entranced by the atmosphere of the French Revolution. These lines suggest the nature of his feelings, which are not merely supportive of the French people (after all, the speaker is not French and has never visited the country), but are rooted in a more general idealism. To the speaker, France's recent history represents an ideological, political, and social rebirth that may soon spread to the rest of the world. Its underlying ideals are universal ones: equality, love of humanity, freedom, and passion. As a result, while he looks towards France as an example, he finds the country's new atmosphere radiating over the French and Swiss borders to create or at least suggest an entirely new Europe.
That day we first
Beheld the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
To have a soulless image on the eye
Which had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be.
In a short space, Wordsworth summarizes a complex series of thoughts regarding imagination and experience. He recounts visiting Mont Blanc, a site he had previously known about, imagined, and idealized. The actual mountain is disappointing, but not because of any actual qualities it possesses. Rather, the very fact of its physical reality is upsetting, since its real presence erases and overtakes the treasured mental image that the speaker and his friend have honed. This suggests that the imaginary, far from being a poor substitute for the real, can in fact be valuable and important in its own right. This issue, of the gap between imagination and reality (and even the superiority of imagination) arises repeatedly as the speaker grows older and more critical.
Above all, one thought
Baffled my understanding, how men lived
Even next-door neighbors, as we say, yet still
Strangers, and knowing not each other's names.
Prior to moving to the city, the speaker is equally intrigued and disturbed by the mixture of isolation and crowdedness that characterize urban life. He is, after all, raised in a small and tight-knit rural community, and he gives the impression that his peers are constant and intimate parts of his upbringing. Moreover, he is often alone, surrounded only by his thoughts and the natural world. Life in London is quite the opposite. The speaker is never alone, but the people around him are mysteries. This particular quotation describes the way that the speaker feels as a child, but, strikingly, this is precisely what continues to puzzle him even after he has grown up and moved to London: for the speaker, solitude and intimacy are normal, while city crowds are bizarre to the point of being fantastical.
Dumb proclamations of the Prodigies;
And chattering monkeys dangling from their poles,
And children whirling in their roundabouts;
With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes,
And crack the voice in rivalship, the crowd
Inviting; with buffoons against buffoons
Grimacing, writhing, screaming, — him who grinds
The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves,
Rattles the salt-box, thumps the kettle-drum...
Though he is describing a city fair, an occasion of leisure and celebration, the speaker manages to make his descriptions feel intense to the point of being almost nightmarish, if still exciting. He has several techniques for doing so. One of those techniques is repetition. When describing crowds or other overpowering settings, Wordsworth tends to use phrases like "buffoons against buffoons" to stress repetitive, unrelenting patterns. Compound words and anaphora (the repetition of "and" at the beginning of several lines) also contribute to a sense of unremitting onslaught. Moreover, while Wordsworth rarely uses onomatopoeia in the Prelude, he employs a great deal of it here in words like "chattering," "rattles," and "thumps." Onomatopoetic writing removes a barrier between the reader and the events, so that the reader becomes exposed and vulnerable to sound in a way that rarely occurs in writing. This mimics the speaker's feeling of exposure to others while in the city.
I still
At all times had a real solid world
Of images about me; did not pine
As one in cities bred might do; as though,
Beloved Friend! hast told me that thou didst,
Great Spirit as thou art
Here, as in several passages throughout the Prelude, the speaker directly addresses one specific reader: fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As elsewhere, he expresses admiration and pity for Coleridge, suggesting that his addressee was deprived of certain experiences of beauty and had to seek them out through great effort. The speaker describes himself as having had a somewhat easy experience, since he was raised surrounded by natural beauty and was able to turn to his memories of nature even when surrounded by urban life. Coleridge, he implies, had only a longing for natural beauty, but had no memories to sustain him. This suggests that the aim of the Prelude is in part to describe the natural world with sufficient vividness that it becomes accessible to Coleridge and to other readers unable to access it as deeply or immediately as Wordsworth himself.
For, born in a poor district, and which yet
Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,
Manners erect, and frank simplicity,
Than any other nook of English land,
It was my fortune scarcely to have seen
Through the whole tenor of my school-day time
The face of one, who, whether boy or man,
Was vested with attention or respect
Through claims of wealth or blood
Here, the speaker draws a direct link between his upbringing and the political beliefs that characterize his young adulthood. He does not, however, claim to have been raised in an especially politically charged atmosphere. Instead, his childhood and the world around him offered a model for a fair and functional society, in which status is neither especially important nor determined according to the family into which one is born. With this observation, Wordsworth positions his Englishness as a benefit rather than a drawback when it comes to understanding the Revolution in France. Being a foreigner, he suggests, allows one to view the world uncorrupted by French cultural hierarchies and limitations. In fact, he later asserts, his upbringing made equal rights and other revolutionary principles seem not merely valid, but inevitable.
...that we should see the earth
Unthwarted in her wish to recompense
The industrious, and the lowly child of toil,
All institutes for ever blotted out
That legalized exclusion, empty pomp
Abolished, sensual state and cruel power
In this passage, the speaker describes the worldview that he shares with his friend Beaupois. Both men believe that the "legalized exclusion" and "empty pomp" of the French monarchy are completely unnatural, going against the very wishes of the earth herself. With this framing, Wordsworth makes the Revolution seem less radical or idealistic, instead framing royalists as immature, wasteful, and unrealistic. The existing social order is, he hints, actually easier to overturn than it is to maintain, because its conditions are both so unfair and so bizarrely contrived. Moreover, he says, they held up by such a small and powerful group of people and institutions that they cannot reasonably continue.
Therefore to serve was high beatitude;
The tumult was a gladness, and the fear
Ennobling, venerable; sleep secure,
And waking thoughts more rich than happiest dreams.
The speaker laments that France's current power-brokers induce fear in even their allies, demanding total acquiescence and devotion. Even so, he points out an inconsistency in his own worldview: he has actually greatly enjoyed the experience of feeling subservient in the past. This subservience, however, has been not to other humans or even to a political movement but rather to God and nature (these concepts are, in many ways, synonymous within the Prelude). That type of subservience is dignified rather than humiliating, ultimately bringing about growth, inspiration, and delight. In the end, the speaker asserts, obedience is neither virtuous nor shameful: it is morally and aesthetically neutral, its value depending on who one is obedient to and why.
...They found their joy,
They made it, ever thirsty as a child,
(If light desires of innocent little ones
May with such heinous appetites be matched),
Having a toy, a wind-mill, through the air
Do of itself blow fresh, and make the vane
Spin in his eyesight, he is not content...
In his condemnation of some French politicians' violence and oppressiveness, Wordsworth reaches for an unexpected and ironic metaphor—that of a child playing impatiently with a toy. Through this simile, he suggests that human oppressiveness is in this case not dictated by unbending principles or rigid hierarchies. Rather, it is a result of impulsiveness and frivolity, albeit with far more severe consequences. By suggesting that the Reign of Terror is ultimately childish, Wordsworth both condemns and dismisses it. At the same time, he takes care to point out one fundamental difference: France's political leaders lack the innocence of a child. In the Prelude, childhood is conceived of as a period of almost sacred innocence, which is in itself a type of wisdom. The people Wordsworth condemns are portrayed as childishly ignorant, but lacking the fundamental attribute that makes childishness valuable.
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven!
In these famous lines, the speaker isn't only describing the carefree happiness of youth. Instead, he's describing youth as a political orientation of sorts, in which everything is geared towards anticipation and optimism. These lines come in the midst of a longer passage describing the heady pleasure of anticipating a revolutionized, utopian world. For the young speaker and for young people generally, Wordsworth tells us, this anticipation is an end in itself, more potent and even more enjoyable than actually achieving one's longed-for goals. In other words, to be young is heaven precisely because it promises so much change and possibility—and, for this specific generation, youth coincides with a feeling of social rebirth throughout Europe.
The morning shines,
Nor heedeth Man's perverseness; Spring returns,—
I saw the Spring return, when I was dead
To deeper hope, yet I had joy for her
After the events of the French Revolution, the speaker enters a period of despair. He alienates himself from nature, trying to force his mind into conforming to a hyperanalytical, empirical philosophy. But, while his own mind is fickle, nature is reliably cyclical. Regardless of the speaker's attitude, the natural world around him is constantly self-renewing. This renewal of life helps jolt the speaker out of his mental state, and it also symbolizes the upcoming renewal of his own imaginative life. The passage's repetitive, rhythmic language—for instance, the repetition of the word "Spring"—imitates the steady, cyclical patterns of nature and its seasons.
And labour in excess and poverty
From day to day pre-occupy the ground
Of the affections, and to Nature's self
Oppose a deeper nature; there, indeed
Love cannot be; nor does it easily thrive
In cities
The speaker is dismissive of those who claim that love is a luxury, asserting that it is important and even fundamental. However, he acknowledges that love does tend to be absent or scarce in environments of deprivation. In cities, where people are alienated, and in rural areas where people are exploited and exhausted, it is difficult for love to thrive. By taking this stance, Wordsworth draws a connection between political and emotional life. Political oppression actually affects the thoughts, feelings, and relationships of those who suffer under it, he suggests. The most rewarding elements of mental and emotional existence are unavailable to people who spend their time and energy focused on mere survival.
This Love more intellectual cannot be
Without Imagination, which, in truth,
Is but another name for absolute strength
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
This passage offers a neat summation of the speaker's ideas by the end of The Prelude. Previously, he has suffered, feeling torn between reason and imagination. Now, in a more mature state, he feels that true imagination actually encompasses reason—not a shallow form of reason, but a truly insightful and intellectually curious form of it. Moreover, imagination is inseparable from love. Love, in turn, is a capacious concept encompassing social relationships as well as the relationship that an individual shares with nature and with the divine. In other words, the various forces that the speaker may once have seen as being in competition for his attention are, he concludes, meant to work in conjunction with one another to help produce great works.
