The prelude - Wordsworth

• What is the context?

  • Poem about childhood/ nature/ nostalgia
  • Romantic poet who rejected authority
  • Autobiographical
  • Both parents died before he was 15 so used nature as cathartic tool
• 'Untir'd horse' 'Pack loud bellowing' 'hunted hare'
• It was a time of rapture
• We hiss'd along the polished ice
• Precipices rang aloud
• Into the tumult sent an alien sound of melancholy
• The orange sky of evening died away