The Prelude, by William Wordsworth

Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem about his development as a poet, written in over 7,700 lines of blank verse, covers a disparate range of topics: rural customs in England, childhood, revolution in France, the nature of man, and becoming a poet. Beautifully written, it is lyrical and sensitive, as one would expect romantic poetry to be.

I read a parallel text version containing both the 1805 and 1850 versions of the poem, switching back and forth between them as I read. It is hard to describe things as clearly and imaginatively as Wordsworth does; so, I thought I would let him speak for himself with minimal intervention from me. I’ve grouped the quotations into the following subjects:

• Development of a Poet
  
• Being a Writer
  
• Sources of Inspiration
  
• Freedom and Solitude
  
• Caught Pondering
  
• Mankind
  
• An Amazing Capture
  

Development of a Poet

Wordsworth first describes the creative muse as a breeze, one that grows into a tempest “vexing its own creation.” When the muse arrives, it brings with it the assurance of work, if not “progress in an honourable field:”

A corresponding mild creative breeze,
A vital breeze which traveled 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
Of active days, of dignity and thought,
Of progress in an honourable field,
Pure passions, virtue, knowledge, and delight,
The holy life of music and of verse. (1, 43-54 1805)

Here he describes how he changed as a writer and struggled with uncertainty with his writing and the results of “forced labour.” It doesn’t appear he always followed Annie Dillard’s and Rollo May’s advice to wait until the muse comes to you:

     my nature’s outward coat
Changed also slowly and insensibly,
To the deep quiet and majestic thoughts
Of loneliness succeeded empty noise
And superficial pastimes; now and then
Forced labour, and more frequently forced hopes;
And, worse than all, a treasonable growth
Of indecisive judgements, that impaired
And shook the mind’s simplicity. (3, 208-216 1805)

He finally resigned himself to being just a poet with the belief that there would be an audience for the self he pours forth:

A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth;
And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown,
If willing audience fail not, Nature's self,
By all varieties of human love
Assisted… (11, 347-351 1850)

He considers himself chosen for this profession and makes it his goal to understand “all passions and all moods” which exist and to incorporate those moods into his experience:

     I was a chosen son.
For hither I had come with holy powers
And faculties, whether to work or feel;
To apprehend all passions and all moods
Which time and place and season do impress
Upon the visible universe, and work
Like changes there by force of my own mind.
I was a Freeman; in the purest sense
Was free, and to majestic ends was strong.
I do not speak of learning, moral truth,
Or understanding; ‘twas enough for me
To know that I was otherwise endowed. (3, 82-93 1805)

Here he describes how, when poetic writings poured out of him, to his surprised, they conformed themselves to the “rules of art” that he had studied. He goes on to show how he applied this poetic skill to everything, “nothing was safe:”

But when that first poetic faculty
Of plain Imagination and severe,
No longer a mute influence of the soul,
Ventured, at some rash Muse's earnest call,
To try her strength among harmonious words;
And to book-notions and the rules of art
Did knowingly conform itself; there came
Among the simple shapes of human life
A wilfulness of fancy and conceit;
And Nature and her objects beautified
These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn,
They burnished her. From touch of this new power
Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew
Beside the well-known charnel-house had then
A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost,
That took his station there for ornament:
The dignities of plain occurrence then
Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point
Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. (8, 365-383, 1850)

He even describes, somewhat shockingly, how he could turn a window’s mourning into a poetic conceit:

Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow
Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps
To the cold grave in which her husband slept,
One night, or haply more than one, through pain
Or half-insensate impotence of mind,
The fact was caught at greedily, and there
She must be visitant the whole year through,
Wetting the turf with never-ending tears. (8, 365-391 1850)

But as he points out, a writer must learn to endure “the shock of various tempers” and to develop two natures, “one that feels, the other that observes:”

In hardy independence, to stand up
Amid conflicting interests, and the shock
Of various tempers; to endure and note
What was not understood, though known to be;
Among the mysteries of love and hate,
Honour and shame, looking to right and left,
Unchecked by innocence too delicate,
And moral notions too intolerant,
Sympathies too contracted. Hence, when called
To take a station among men, the step
Was easier, the transition more secure,
More profitable also; for, the mind
Learns from such timely exercise to keep
In wholesome separation the two natures,
The one that feels, the other that observes. (14, 333-347 1850)

Later, when he returns to poetry after wandering through England and France (including the French Revolution), he discovers he is no longer intimidated by the great poets:

The Poet's soul was with me at that time;
Sweet meditations, the still overflow
Of present happiness, while future years
Lacked not anticipations, tender dreams,
No few of which have since been realised;
And some remain, hopes for my future life.
Four years and thirty, told this very week,
Have I been now a sojourner on earth,
By sorrow not unsmitten; yet for me
Life's morning radiance hath not left the hills,
Her dew is on the flowers. Those were the days
Which also first emboldened me to trust
With firmness, hitherto but lightly touched
By such a daring thought, that I might leave
Some monument behind me which pure hearts
Should reverence. The instinctive humbleness,
Maintained even by the very name and thought
Of printed books and authorship, began
To melt away; and further, the dread awe
Of mighty names was softened down and seemed
Approachable, admitting fellowship
Of modest sympathy…. (6, 42-63 1805)

He ends with the conviction that poets will connect with readers through their writings and that man will one day supersede nature as an object of beauty and adulation:

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak
A lasting inspiration, sanctified
By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved,
Others will love, and we will teach them how;
Instruct them how the mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this frame of things
(Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes
And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged)
In beauty exalted, as it is itself
Of quality and fabric more divine. (14, 444-454 1850)

Being a Writer

He describes what it feels like to be a writer:

The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of many,
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
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. (1, 434-4411805)

And not to leave the story of that time
Imperfect, with these habits must be joined,
Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, that loved
A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds,
The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring;
A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice
And inclination mainly, and the mere
Redundancy of youth's contentedness. (6, 171-177 1805)

There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,
No languor, no dejection, no dismay,
No absence scarcely can there be, for those
Who love as we do.… (6, 244-247 1805)

The following passage ends with a description of “points…where we all stand single,” sounding like something Virginia Woolf might write:

     Not of outward things
Done visible for other minds, words, signs,
Symbols or actions, but of my own heart
Have I been speaking, and my youthful mind.
O Heavens! how awful is the might of souls,
And what they do within themselves which yet
The yoke of earth is new to them, the world
Nothing but a wild field where they are sown.
This is, in truth, heroic argument,
And genuine prowess, which I wished to touch
With hands however weak, but in the main
It lies far hidden from the reach of words.
Points have we all of us within our souls
Where all stand single … (3, 174-187 1805)

Here he describes not death and dissolution, but the workings of a poet’s mind:

That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts
There was a darkness, call it solitude
Or black 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. (1, 418-427 1805)

Sources of Inspiration

Where does he find his sources of inspiration? From events in childhood (“spots of time”):

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence, depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks
Among those passages of life that give
Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,
The mind is lord and master--outward sense
The obedient servant of her will. Such moments
Are scattered everywhere, taking their date
From our first childhood. (12, 208-225 1850)

From the Great City, a source for material that he could always pull from:

     And less
Than other intellects had mine been used
To lean upon extrinsic circumstance
Of record or tradition; but a sense
Of what in the Great City had been done
And suffered, and was doing, suffering, still,
Weighed with me, could support the test of thought;
And, in despite of all that had gone by,
Or was departing never to return,
There I conversed with majesty and power
Like independent natures. (8, 623-632 1850)

And from nature:

Yes, I remember when the changeful earth,
And twice five [summers] 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
A pure organic pleasure from the lines
Of curling mist, or from the level plain
Of waters coloured by the steady clouds. (1, 586-593 1805)

Especially from nature:

In progress through this verse, my mind hath looked
Upon the speaking face of earth and heaven
As her prime teacher, intercourse with man
Established by the sovereign Intellect,
Who through that bodily image hath diffused
A soul divine which we participate,
A deathless spirit. (5, 11-17 1805)

Freedom and Solitude

He speaks often of the freedom to choose what to do, what to read and write about, and the solitude that goes along with that freedom:

Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
Are mine in prospect … (1, 26-27 1805)

Enough that I am free; for months to come
May dedicate myself to chosen tasks … (1, 33-34 1805)

And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of Solitude. (2, 77-78 1805)

Later in the work, he seems to question whether the amount of freedom he exercised in selecting his own interests was too great and caused his potency as a writer to suffer:

Yet independent study seemed a course
Of hardy disobedience toward friends
And kindred, proud rebellion and unkind.
This spurious virtue, rather let it bear
A name it now deserves, this cowardice,
Gave treacherous sanction to that over-love
Of freedom which encouraged me to turn
From regulations even of my own
As from restraints and bonds. Yet who can tell--
Who knows what thus may have been gained, both then
And at a later season, or preserved;
What love of nature, what original strength
Of contemplation, what intuitive truths,
The deepest and the best, what keen research,
Unbiassed, unbewildered, and unawed? (6, 27-41 1805)

He asks whether a life of freedom can lead to “perpetual progress”?

Oh! who is he that hath his whole life long
Preserved, enlarged, this freedom in himself?
For this alone is genuine liberty:
Where is the favoured being who hath held
That course unchecked, unerring, and untired,
In one perpetual progress smooth and bright? (14, 130-135 1850)

Caught Pondering

He seemed sensitive that he was different from other people and that he might appear peculiar. At times, when walking about, lost in a reverie of poetical thoughts and talking to himself, he enlists his dog to warn him of someone’s approach:

I sauntered, like a river murmuring
And talked to itself, at such a season
It was his custom to jog on before;
But, duly, whensoever he had met
A passenger approaching, which he turn
To give me timely notice, and straightway,
Punctual to such admonishment, I hushed
My voice, composed my gait, and shaped myself
To give and take a greeting that might save
My name from piteous rumours, such as wait
On men suspected to be crazed in brain. (4, 110-120 1805)

Apparently, he has good reason to be wary. He writes about “country people” praying for his constant questioning of everything and their concerns about the knowledge he was gaining:

     he sifts, he weights;
Takes nothing upon trust: his teachers stare;
The country people pray for God’s good grace,
And tremble at his deep experiments.
All things are put to question; he must live
Knowing that he grows wiser every day
Or else not live at all, and seeing too
Each little drop of wisdom as it falls
Into the dimpling cistern of his heart … (5, 337-345 1805)

Mankind

He beautifully describes the mind of man as the “breath and harmony of music” and describes with seeming awe how disparate parts of someone, such as early miseries, are part of that same person when he or she grows older:

The mind of man is framed even like the breath
And harmony of music; there is a dark
Inscrutable 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
Am worthy of myself! (1, 351-361 1805)

Here he describes man as simultaneously exalted and lowly, full of meaningful contradiction:

     In the midst stood Man,
Outwardly, inwardly contemplated,
As, of all visible natures, crown, though born
Of dust, and kindred to the worm; a Being,
Both in perception and discernment, first
In every capability of rapture,
Through the divine effect of power and love;
As, more than anything we know, instinct
With godhead, and, by reason and by will,
Acknowledging dependency sublime. (8, 385-494 1850)

Here how man’s immortal soul gives one strength:

How life pervades the undecaying mind;
How the immortal soul with God-like power
Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep
That time can lay upon her; how on earth,
man, if he do but live within the light
Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad
His being with a strength that cannot fail. (4, 154-161 1805)

An Amazing Capture

Amazing, he is able to capture a non-corporal experience he describes as a “weight of ages” passing across his soul, affecting him forever, but possessing him for just a moment:

A weight of ages did at once descend
Upon my heart; no thought embodied, no
Distinct remembrances, but weight and power,
Power growing under weight: alas! I feel
That I am trifling: 'twas a moment's pause,
All that took place within me came and went
As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,
And grateful memory, as a thing divine. (8, 552-559 1850)