Extract from The Prelude

• "One summer evening (led by her) I found/ a little boat tied to willow tree/ within a rocky cove, its usual home /straight I unloosened her chain"
• "Act of stealth and trouble pleasure"
• "Went heaving through the water like a swan when [...] the horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge"
• "Measured motion like a living thing strode after me"
• "The silent water stole my way back to the covert of the willow tree"
• "In grave and serious mood [...] for many days"
• "No familiar shapes/ remained, no pleasant images of trees, /of sea or sky, no colours of green fields; /but huge and mighty forms"
• • William Wordsworth was Romantic Poet
  • He believed imagination was greater than science + anti-industrial (largely concerned with nature)
  • He saw nature as sublime (of such great/overwhelming beauty)
  • His childhood in Lake District was a natural beauty - so influenced his poetry
  • Poem is about his view of man/nature compared to society - superior power of nature