the prelude

• and through the silent water stole my way
• call it solitude/ or blank desertion
• no familiar shapes/ remained
• small circles glittering idly in the moon
• she was an elfin pinnace
• upreared its head
• there hung a darkness
• huge and mighty forms, that do not live/ like living men
• a huge peak, dark and huge
• context

  one of the first and most influential of the romantic era, nostalgic poem in its thoughts about his childhood and the intense feelings of delight he experienced when he was walked or, as a child, played in the countryside