The prelude

• “An act of stealth and troubled pleasure”


  Speaker knows he is wrong but doesn’t csre for consequences

  Connotes sneakiness and shows speaker is morally wrong
• “Nothing but the stars and the grey sky”


  Nothing- abstract noun

  Highlights the vastness and openness of nature
• “Upreared it’s head”


  Dramatic, zoomorphism
• “She was an elphin pinnace“


  Elfin = magical
• “Call it solitude”


  Imperative phrase, indescribable experience
• “The grim shape towered up”

  Grum is an omen of death

  Speaker now finds nature deadly
• Blank verse


  No breaks in the verses makes the audience overwhelmed

  Symbolic of young Wordsworth’s experience in nature and how he was overwhelmed
• Wordsworth had a depressing childhood and turned to nature as an escape leading to his career as a romantic poet
• “Glittering idly” “Sparkling light”


  Beautiful and heavenly descripitons of nature
• Line 21, “when”

  Volta/turning point of the poem
• “A huge peak, black and huge”

  Repetition

  Reader is in a state of realisation

  Harsh imagery