English Lit - Extract From the Prelude

• Prelude


  A poem by William Wordsworth that tells a true story from Wordsworth's own childhood
• Prelude


  • Takes place in the Lake District, an area of northwest England famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains
  • Describes the poet as a young boy stealing a rowing boat and rowing across Ullswater Lake
• Wordsworth led by nature


  Nature is personified in the poem
• Wordsworth's actions in the poem

  1. Finds a boat chained up

  2. Gets in and pushes off onto the lake

  3. Feels powerful and delighted with himself

  4. Fixes his eyes on a huge mountain that springs into view

  5. Turns and rows back to the shore

  6. Harassed for days by the memory of the event
• William Wordsworth was one of the romantic poets, as were William Blake and Percy Shelley
• Romantic poetry


  • A poetic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries
  • Key convention is a dislike of urban life and embrace of the natural world
• Stealth


  Connotation of being both sneaky and sly
• The speaker's sense of power

  Grows from the way his description of the boat changes
• The speaker's confidence, pride, and vocabulary

  Are drained by the sight of the mountain
• Poem structure

  • One long stanza
  • Enjambment (continuation of a sentence beyond the end of a line)
  • Repetition of 'no' to show the speaker's pride has vanished
• The poem

  Shows a speaker with misguided notions of human power who learns the lesson that nature is truly powerful
• Poems that compare well with the Prelude

  • Ozymandias
  • My Last Duchess
  • Kamikaze
  • Tissue
• Poems about the power of nature

  • Kamikaze
  • Storm on the Island
  • Exposure
  • Tissue
• ‘Upreared it’s head’
• ‘Like a swan’
• ‘A little boat tied to a willow tree’
• ‘The horizons bound, a huge peak, black and huge’
• ‘Struck and struck again’
• ‘Towered up between me and the stars’
• ‘Trouble to my dreams’
• ‘But huge and mighty for me, that do not live like living men’

  • nature described as a powerful, conscious being that can influence our lives
• ‘No pleasant images of trees, of sea or sky’

  • narrator no longer sees natures beauty yet discovered there is more to it than he originally described it as
• ‘For many days’

  • long lasting impact
• One summer evening (led by her)’ / ‘Leaving her behind still’
• Small circles glittering idly in the moon’ / ‘sparkling light’ / ‘Lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake’
• The horizons bound, a huge peak, black and huge’ / ‘Strode after me’ / ‘There hung a darkness’
• ‘I struck and struck again’ / ‘With trembling oars I turned
• The natural world is much greater and much more powerful than man; human power is insignificant in comparison (perhaps a critique of the human assumption of power)
• Man must respect the natural world and its power as well as admire its

  beauty; it is important to consider it not that he fears nature but perhaps that he scared by the realisation of his own insignificance
• The power of memory is depicted in the poem, as we see how this

  seemingly insignificant moment has shaped his life. This serves to

  emphasise the above about nature.
• The story is a simple one encapsulating a boy’s love of nature and realisation of nature’s vast power. It tells the story of a night-time adventure in a stolen rowing boat that instils a deeper and fearful respect for power of nature.

  At first, the boy is calm and confident, but the sight of a huge mountain that comes into view scares the boy and he flees. He is now in awe of the mountain & fearful of the power of nature.

  The poem highlights we should respect nature and not take it for granted.